Wage Generosity

Ekkehart Schlicht

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: Actual wages typically exceed collectively set standard wages. Standard wages are, therefore, not binding, yet they seem to influence actual wages strongly. An explanation for this phenomenon is offered along the lines of the Fair Wage/Effort Hypothesis proposed by G. Akerlof and J. Yellen (1990). It is argued that it is precisely when collectively set wages are relatively unimportant for perceptions of fairness at the firm level, that large wage mark-ups emerge. The general point seems to be that the results of economic modeling may react very sensitively to the customary suppression of "non-economic" factors.

Keywords: Wage setting; fair wage; collective bargaining; efficiency wage; wage drift (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 3 148(1992): pp. 437-451

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