Firms’ Rents, Workers’ Bargaining Power and the Union Wage Premium
Journal article: This article identifies the wage premium associated with firm-level union recognition in France. An average premium of 2% is found despite the fact that most workers are already covered by industry-level agreements. To explore the origin of the premium, I construct a simple bargaining model from which I derive three predictions, which are tested empirically using matched employer–employee data. The main prediction is that if intra-firm bargaining is behind the union wage premium, the latter increases with the amount of quasi-rents available in the firms that unions organise. This prediction is validated empirically when firms' market shares are used as a proxy for their rents.
Author(s)
Thomas Breda
Journal
- The Economic Journal
Date of publication
- 2015
Keywords
- Firms’Rents
Pages
- 1616-1652
URL of the HAL notice
Version
- 1
Volume
- 125