Unions, efficiency wages and unemployment

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium dual labour market model which incorporates both efficiency wages and union bargaining with monopolistically competitive firms. In one sector, a traditional sector produces a homogeneous good and firms face perfect competition on the product market. In the other sector, monopolistically competitive firms produce a horizontally differentiated good. In this sector, unions represent the interests of the workers and through bilateral bargaining with the employers, try to capture some of the rents which accrue here. Further, firms can increase their profits by paying the workers with the highest productivity an efficiency wage. Therefore, there is not only a wage differential between the two sectors, but also within the unionized sector. It is shown that not only the degree of union bargaining power but also the market power firms possess on the product market leads to an increase in unemployment.In einem allgemeinem Gleichgewichtsmodell wird ein unvollkommener dualer Arbeitsmarkt, bei dem in einem Sektor sowohl Effizienzlöhne gezahlt werden als auch Gewerkschaften vertreten sind, die das Lohnniveau für Ihre Mitglieder aushandeln, mit monopolistischer Konkurrenz auf dem Gütermarkt kombiniert. Es zeigt sich, dass nicht nur die Verhandlungsmacht der Gewerkschaften, sondern auch Marktmacht der Unternehmen auf dem Gütermarkt die Arbeitslosigkeit erhöhen. Dies liegt darin begründet, dass zum einen ein höherer Wettbewerbsdruck die Lohnforderungen der Gewerkschaften reduziert und zum anderen die Unternehmen nur einen geringeren Preisaufschlag auf ihre Kosten verlangen können. Beide Effekte führen dazu, dass die Preise für diese Güter sinken, wodurch die Güter- und die Arbeitsnachfrage steigen

Unions, monopolistic competition and unemployment

This paper develops a general equilibrium dual labour market model which incorporates union bargaining with monopolistically competitive firms. It is shown that not only the degree of union bargaining power but also the market power firms possess on the product market have a positive influence on unemployment. The reason for this is that less intense product market competition increases the negotiated wage rates as well as the price mark-up firms charge over their marginal costs, both of which reduce labour demand. It is also shown that higher competition intensity will force firms to merge to larger units

Regional disparities in employment of high-skilled foreigners: Determinants and options for migration policy in Germany

We investigate the regional disparities in high-skilled foreign employment in Germany. The importance of different factors which attract highly qualified migrants to specific regions and the role of labour-migration policy is analysed. Our results show that labour-market variables as well as the supply of tertiary education are important for the location choice. Based on these empirical results we discuss options of decentralized migration policy in Germany. --Migration,regional disparities,labour-migration policy,Germany

Globalisation, wage adjustment, and unemployment: An empirical analysis based on the factor price frontier

We investigate the effects of globalisation on the labour market using the factor price frontier. The factor price frontier defines a negative relationship between the real rate of return and the real wage rate. As international capital mobility equalises the real rate of return in all economies, real wages also have to converge. If they do not adjust, unemployment and technical change will result in relatively capitalabundant countries. We estimate the factor price frontier for the United States and for Germany with the Johansen procedure. While the U. S. economy adjusts along a single factor price frontier throughout the sample, there are three distinct frontiers in the German case. The outward shifts of the factor price frontier coincide with significant hikes in unemployment.

Regional unemployment forecasts with spatial interdependencies

"We forecast unemployment for the 176 German labour-market districts on a monthly basis. Because of their small size, strong spatial interdependencies exist between these regional units. To account for these as well as for the heterogeneity in the regional development over time, we apply different versions of an univariate spatial GVAR model. When comparing the forecast precision with univariate time-series methods, we find that the spatial model does indeed perform better or at least as well. Hence, the GVAR model provides an alternative or complementary approach to commonly used methods in regional forecasting which do not consider regional interdependencies." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))Arbeitslosigkeit, regionale Verteilung, Arbeitsmarktprognose, regionale Disparität, Prognoseverfahren, Regionalökonomie, regionaler Arbeitsmarkt, Arbeitsagenturbezirke, Prognosegenauigkeit, Prognosemodell

Information asymmetry, education signals and the case of Ethnic and Native Germans

"This paper analyses the effects of education signals for Ethnic Germans and Germans without a migration background ('Native Germans'). We base our analysis on a sorting model with productivity enhancing effects of education. We compare whether the signalling value differs between the migrants and non-migrants in the German labour market. Starting from the theoretical result that only a separating equilibrium can exist, we find substantial empirical differences between Ethnic and Native Germans with the same formal education level. This empirical analysis is done with a completely new dataset based on administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))integrierte Erwerbsbiografien, Bildungsniveau, Bildungsabschluss, Inländer, Aussiedler, Hochqualifizierte, mittlere Qualifikation, Niedrigqualifizierte, Lohnhöhe, Lohnunterschied

Information Asymmetry, Education Signals and the Case of Ethnic and Native Germans

This paper analyses the effects of education signals for Ethnic Germans and Germans without a migration background (“Native Germans”). We base our analysis on a sorting model with productivity enhancing effects of education. We compare whether the signalling value differs between the migrants and non-migrants in the German labour market. Starting from the theoretical result that only a separating equilibrium can exist, we find substantial empirical differences between Ethnic and Native Germans with the same formal education level. This empirical analysis is done with a completely new dataset based on administrative data from the German Federal Employment Agency.sorting theory, human-capital theory, returns to education, migration

Unions, growth and unemployment

We extend the standard quality-ladder model with heterogeneous workers by including efficiency wages and unions. We find that higher union bargaining power leads to a negative relationship between growth and unemployment. An increase in the supply of human capital, however, on the one hand induces firms to substitute high-skilled labour for jobs previously performed by low-skilled individu- als and on the other hand, increases the demand for low-skilled labour as their productivity rises due to the higher skill-intensity. Depending on which effect dominates, either a positive or negative relationship between the growth and unemployment rates results

Regional unemployment forecasts with spatial interdependencies

"We forecast unemployment for the 176 German labour-market districts on a monthly basis. Because of their small size, strong spatial interdependencies exist between these regional units. To account for these as well as for the heterogeneity in the regional development over time, we apply different versions of an univariate spatial GVAR model. When comparing the forecast precision with univariate time-series methods, we find that the spatial model does indeed perform better or at least as well. Hence, the GVAR model provides an alternative or complementary approach to commonly used methods in regional forecasting which do not consider regional interdependencies." (author's abstract)Die Arbeitslosigkeit für die 176 deutschen administrativen Arbeitsmarktregionen (im Allgemeinen Arbeitsagenturbezirke) wird auf einer monatlichen Basis prognostiziert. Wegen ihrer geringen Größe existieren zwischen diesen regionalen Einheiten starke räumliche Interdependenzen. Um diese und auch die Heterogenität der regionalen Entwicklung im Zeitablauf berücksichtigen zu können, kommen verschiedene Versionen eines eindimensionalen räumlichen GVAR-Modells zur Anwendung. Wenn man die Genauigkeit der Prognose mit eindimensionalen Zeitreihenmethoden vergleicht, zeigt sich, dass das räumliche Modell bessere oder zumindest gleich gute Ergebnisse erzielt. Folglich bietet das GVAR-Modell eine Alternative oder einen ergänzenden Ansatz zu normalerweise eingesetzten Methoden für die regionale Prognose, die regionale Interdependenzen unberücksichtigt lassen. (IAB

Regional employment forecasts with spatial interdependencies

"The labour-market policy-mix in Germany is increasingly being decided on a regional level. This requires additional knowledge about the regional development which (disaggregated) national forecasts cannot provide. Therefore, we separately forecast employment for the 176 German labour- market districts on a monthly basis. We first compare the prediction accuracy of standard time-series methods: autoregressive integrated moving averages (ARIMA), exponentially weighted moving averages (EWMA) and the structural-components approach (SC) in these small spatial units. Second, we augment the SC model by including autoregressive elements (SCAR) in order to incorporate the influence of former periods of the dependent variable on its current value. Due to the importance of spatial interdependencies in small labour-market units, we further augment the basic SC model by lagged values of neighbouring districts in a spatial dynamic panel (SCSAR). The prediction accuracies of the models are compared using the mean absolute percentage forecast error (MAPFE) for the simulated out-of-sample forecast for 2005. Our results show that the SCSAR is superior to the SCAR and basic SC model. ARIMA and EWMA models perform slightly better than SCSAR in many of the German labour-market districts. This reflects that these two moving-average models can better capture the trend reversal beginning in some regions at the end of 2004. All our models have a high forecast quality with an average MAPFE lower than 2.2 percent." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))regionaler Arbeitsmarkt, Beschäftigungsentwicklung, Prognoseverfahren, Arbeitsmarktprognose - Methode