The Impact of a Unionised Labour Market in a Schumpeterian Growth Model

This paper extends the seminal creative destruction growth model of Aghion/Howitt (1992) to investigate the relationship between unemployment and growth. We distinguish low-skilled and high-skilled labour and assume that a union bargains over the low-skilled labour wage. This causes unemployment, but the growth e ect is ambiguous. On the one hand the higher wage will squeeze expected pro ts of innovators, which is bad for growth. On the other hand the union a ects the marginal product of high-skilled labour and hence the high-skilled wage in the manufacturing sector declines. This causes a "migration" of high-skilled labour from the manufacturing into the research sector. This e ect is growth enhancing. We show that the overall e ect depends crucially on the elasticity of substitution between high-skilled and low-skilled labour. With an elasticity less than one the "good" growth e ect dominates the bad, and vice versa. In the Cobb Douglas case the two e ects cancel out.Labour Unions, Unemployment, Growth, R&D

Smoking Bans in the Presence of Social Interaction

This paper analyzes the welfare effects of a public smoking ban in bars. We construct a model that captures crucial features of bar life: competing bars, social interaction, and heterogenous preferences for a smoking ban. Smokers and non-smokers simultaneously choose a bar given their preferences for meeting other people. Bars anticipate the behavior of individuals and choose the smoking regime strategically. Since the (dis)utility from smoking and social interaction are substitutes, the smoking regime is a stronger coordination device if the disutility from smoking is large. If all bars allow smoking in equilibrium, a public smoking ban enhances welfare

Individual vs. Collective Bargaining in the Large Firm Search Model

We analyze the welfare and employment effects of different wage bargaining regimes. Within the large firm search model, we show that collective bargaining affects employment via two channels. Collective bargaining exerts opposing effects on job creation and wage setting. Firms have a stronger incentive for strategic employment, while workers benefit from the threat of a strike. We find that the employment increase due to the strategic motive is dominated by the employment decrease due to the increase in workers' threat point. In aggregate equilibrium, employment is ineciently low under collective bargaining. But it is not always true that equilibrium wages exceed those under individual bargaining. If unemployment benefits are sufficiently low, collectively bargained wages are smaller. The theory sheds new light on policies concerned with strategic employment and the relation between replacement rates and the extent of collective wage bargaining

The Strategic Effects of Smoking Bans

We analyse the welfare effects of a publicly imposed smoking ban in privately owned places like bars. In an economy where households have heterogenous (positive and negative) attitudes towards smoking bans, bars can use the smoking regime choice as a strategic variable. In doing so, bars may endogenously implement a product differentiation. Focusing on the possibility to separate markets, we derive the Nash equilibrium of the decentral economy in a setting in which duopoly bars compete in capacity and choose the smoking regime. We show how the smoking regime choice is a function of the heterogeneity of households. Moreover, we show that the social planer implements the smoking regime obtained in the decentral economy. As such, imposing smoking bans is welfare decreasing in an economy in which bar landlords chose to allow smoking.Smoking Ban, Endogenous Product Differentiation

Pareto-Improving Unemployment Policies

We investigate how continental European unemployment can be reduced without reducing unemployment benefits and without reducing the net income of low-wage earners. Lower unemployment replacement rates reduce unemployment, the net wage and unemployment benefits. A lower tax on labour increases net wages and - for certain benefit-systems - unemployment benefits as well. Combining these two policies allows to reduce unemployment in countries with “net-Bismarck” and Beveridge systems without reducing net income of workers or of the unemployed. Such a policy becomes self-financing under realistic parameter constellations when taxes are reduced only for low-income workers.inequality, unemployment, taxation, policy reform

Pareto-Improving Unemployment Policies

CWe investigate how continental European unemployment can be reduced without reducing unemployment benefits and without reducing the net income of lowwage earners. Lower unemployment replacement rates reduce unemployment, the net wage and unemployment benefits. A lower tax on labour increases net wages and unemployment benefits. Combining these two policies allows to reduce unemployment without reducing net income of workers or of the unemployed. Such a policy becomes self-financing under realistic parameter constellations when taxes are reduced only for low-income workers.Inequality, Unemployment, Taxation, Policy reform

Growth and Employment Effects of Unions in a Simple Endogenous Growth Model

In this paper we analyse the effects of simultaneous union wage bargaining in a simple two sector growth model. We show that the overall employment effect of unionisation is ambiguous and depends on the relative sectoral wage. Besides the employment effects we analyse how unionisation changes the rate of growth. It is shown that both research sector unionisation and intermediate sector unionisation lower the rate of growth, although the effect of research sector unionisation is more fierce. Moreover we analyse the impact of parameter changes on the growth differential, i.e. the rate of growth in the competitive case over the rate in the unionised case. We can show that whether various parameter changes narrow or widen the growth differential crucially hinges on the wage differential in the unionised case.Labour Unions, Unemployment, Growth, R\&D

Determinanten der Verweildauer in Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland

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Abgaben und Umlagen im dualen Ausbildungssystem

Seit Jahren wird in der Politik bei einem Lehrstellenmangel die Einführung einer Ausbildungsplatzabgabe diskutiert. Welche ökonomischen Argumente sprechen für und welche gegen eine Ausbildungsplatzumlage? Wie ist der jüngste Parteitagsbeschluss der SPD zur Einführung einer Ausbildungsplatzabgabe zu beurteilen

What's the damage? Environmental regulation with policy-motivated bureaucrats

Many environmental-policy problems are characterized by complexity and uncertainty. Government's choice concerning these policies commonly relies on information provided by a bureaucracy. Environmental bureaucrats often have a political motivation of their own, so they might be tempted to misreport environmental effects in order to influence policy. This transforms a problem of uncertainty into one of asymmetric information. We analyze the ensuing principal-agent relationship and derive the government's optimal contract, which conditions policy and rewards on reported environmental effects. We find that agents who are more environmentalist than the government are rewarded for admitting that the environmental impact is low (and vice versa). With higher uncertainty, the bureaucrat has a stronger influence on policy. For some values of the environmental impact, the bureau is permitted to set its own preferred policy (optimal delegation)