Corporatism or Competition?
Labour Contracts, Institutions and Wage Structures in International Comparison

The importance of labour market institutions to labour market outcomes, corporatist versus de-centralized.

Coen Teulings (Author), Joop Hartog (Author)

9780521590730, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 September 1998

364 pages
23.7 x 15.9 x 2.8 cm, 0.705 kg

The authors present important research showing that corporatist institutions generate smaller non-competitive wage differentials than a decentralized system. A theoretical explanation is developed based on the hold-up problem in investments, arguing that corporatist institutions solve the problem by specifying ex ante nominal contracts that remove the necessity of ex post bargaining over the surplus of an employment relationship. The authors also argue that such institutions allow sufficient flexibility to accommodate aggregate shocks, even more so than decentralized systems. Corporatism or Competition? is the first book to bring together the mass of research on comparative wage differences, wage movements and employment behaviour in different countries with different institutional frameworks, in an organized and coherent fashion.

Preface
Symbols and abbreviated references
Synopsis
1. What we observe and what we claim
2. The role of corporatism in models of surplus sharing
3. Beliefs, norms and institutions
4. Union behaviour
5. Wage differentials and rent sharing
6. Tenure wage profiles
7. Unemployment and wage flexibility
8. Inside corporatism: how the Dutch play their own game
9. An assessment: competition or corporatism?
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Labour economics [KCF]