The wage-wage-...-wage-profit relation in a multisector bargaining economy

Abstract

The equalization of profit rates across a multisector production economy subject to Nash bargaining over wages supports an industry wage structure like those that account for a large fraction of actual wage dispersion and a wage-wage-...-wage-profit surface on which the general profit rate can vary inversely or directly with the wage paid in a given industry. Institutional changes that compress or decompress the wage distribution depend for support on industrially specific cross-class coalitions of workers and capitalists. Technical changes that raise capitalists' profits in current prices can lower the equilibrium profit rate.Wage-profit relation, prices of production, wage dispersion, bargaining, technical change