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Wage Interdependence and Competitiveness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

David de la Croix
David de la Croix*
Affiliation:
FNRS and UCL
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Summary

We build a multi-sector model with wage bargaining and imperfect competition to analyse the links between wage interdependence and competitiveness. Quantity constraints together with union power, firm market power and wage externalities play a significant role in the determination of competitiveness and in the transmission of shocks among sectors. This is verified by an empirical study on Belgian data. We identify leading sectors in wage formation and evaluate the effect of sector-specific shocks on the competitiveness of the other sectors.

Résumé

Résumé

On présente un modéle multi-sectoriel avec concurrence imparfaite et négociation collective dans le but d'analyser les liens entre interdépendance des salaires et compétitivité. Les contraintes quantitatives ainsi que le pouvoir des syndicats et des firmes et les externalités salariales jouent un rôle important dans la transmission intersectorielle des chocs et done déterminent la compétitivité des secteurs. Ceci est vérifié dans une etude empirique sur données beiges. Nous identifions les secteurs « leaders » en matiére de négociation collective et évaluons l'effet des chocs sectoriels sur la compétitivité des autres secteurs.

Keywords

432831432831
Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , 1993 , pp. 395 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1993 

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Footnotes

*

This paper is part of the SPES programme E/89400153/PRO. I am grateful to Torben Andersen, Philippe Devillé, Jacques Drèze, Horst Entorf, Henri Sneessens and to the participants to the CEREC Seminar (St Louis, Brussels), IRES Seminar (UCL) and SPES meeting in Marseille for helpful comments. The text benefited also from detailed comments by two anonymous referees. Paul Olbrechts (IRES) kindly provided the statistical material.

References

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