Strike Activity and Centralisation in Wage Setting

Abstract

Auch mit seiner neuen Reihe "IAB-Discussion Paper" will das Forschungsinstitut der Bundesagentur für Arbeit den Dialog mit der externen Wissenschaft intensivieren. Durch die rasche Verbreitung von Forschungsergebnissen über das Internet soll noch vor Drucklegung Kritik angeregt und Qualität gesichert werden.Also with its new series "IAB Discussion Paper" the research institute of the German Federal Employment Agency wants to intensify dialogue with external science. By the rapid spreading of research results via Internet still before printing criticism shall be stimulated and quality shall be ensured. Strike Activity and Centralisation in Wage SettingJohannes AbstractWe test the theoretical claim that coordination and centralisation in wage setting reduce strike activity by estimating nonlinear regression models using a dataset of 17 OECD countries for the period 1972-2000. We find moderating effects of coordination on strike activity but the effects are not stable over time. Several means are employed to check for the robustness of our results. We compute bootstrapped standard errors, conduct nonlinear median regressions. A remaining problem of the study is that we cannot control completely for country-specific heterogeneity in the estimates of coordination and centralisation effects.