The Sources of the Union Wage Gap: The Role of Worker, Firm, Match, and Jobtitle Heterogeneity

John Addison, Pedro Portugal () and Hugo de Almeida Vilares

No 7392, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Using matched employer-employee-contract data for Portugal – a country with near-universal union coverage – we find evidence of a sizable effect of union affiliation on wages. Gelbach's (2016) decomposition procedure is next deployed to ascertain the contributions of worker, firm, match, and job-title heterogeneity to the union wage gap. Of these the most important is the firm fixed effect, followed at some distance by union workers gaining from elevated job titles and/or more generous promotion policies. For its part, unobserved worker quality plays only a very weak role, while there is even less suggestion that improved match quality bolsters the union premium.

Keywords: union density; union wage gap; worker; form; job-title fixed effects; match quality; Gelbach decomposition; Portugal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J31 J33 J41 J51 J52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Sources of the Union Wage Gap: Results from High-Dimensional Fixed Effects Regression Models (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7392

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