The Impact of Wage Bargaining Regime on Firm-Level Competitiveness and Wage Inequality: The Case of Ireland

Seamus McGuinness, Elish Kelly and Philip O'Connell

No WP266, Papers from Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)

Abstract: This paper uses a linked employer-employee dataset to analyse the impact of institutional wage bargaining regimes on levels of average labour costs and within firm wage dispersion in private sector companies in Ireland. The results show that while centralised bargaining reduced labour costs within both the indigenous and foreign-owned sectors, the relative advantage was greater among foreign-owned firms. The analysis suggests that there are potentially large competitiveness gains to multinational companies that choose to locate in countries implementing a centralised bargaining system. Furthermore, the results provide additional support to the view that collective bargaining reduces within firm wage inequality.

Keywords: Ireland/Labour; Costs/Wage; Bargaining; Regimes/Wage; Dispersion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J51 J52 J58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2008-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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