 Minimum Wage Systems and Earnings Inequalities:Does Institutional Diversity Matter?Andrea Garnero, Stephan Kampelmann and Francois Rycx No 13-06, DULBEA Working Papers from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Abstract: This paper explores how the diversity of minimum wage systems affects earnings inequalities within European countries. It relies on the combination of (a) harmonized micro-data from household surveys, (b) data on national statutory minimum wages and coverage rates, and (c) hand-collected information on minimum rates from more than 1,100 sectoral-level agreements across Europe. The analysis covers 18 countries over the period 2007-2009. Empirical results confirm the intuition of many practitioners that the combination of sectoral minimum rates and high coverage of collective bargaining can, at least for earnings inequalities, be regarded as a functional equivalent to a binding statutory minimum wage at the national level. Regression results suggest indeed that both a national statutory minimum wage and, in countries with sectoral-level minima, a higher collective bargaining coverage are significantly associated with lower levels of (overall and inter-industry) wage inequalities and a smaller fraction of workers paid below prevailing minima. Several robustness checks confirm these findings. Keywords: Minimum wage systems; collective bargaining; wage inequality; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published by: Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dul:wpaper:2013/143851 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in DULBEA Working Papers from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC. |
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