Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/329630 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
ifso working paper No. 55
Publisher: 
University of Duisburg-Essen, Institute for Socio-Economics (ifso), Duisburg
Abstract: 
This paper investigates whether workers' bargaining power, which extends beyond union membership to collective wage agreements in Germany, affects the level and distribution of wages at the regional level. We conduct fixed-effect regression analysis and a DFL decomposition on SOEP data from 2014 to 2021 and find, first, that both collective wage agreements and union membership statistically and economically significantly raise wage levels at the national level. Second, and importantly, this effect is regionally heterogeneous: Collective wage agreements continue to be linked to higher wages at the regional level, whereas the relationship is weakened or disappears altogether for union membership. Third, collective wage agreements go along with lower overall wage inequality, while union membership compresses wage inequality mainly at the lower end of the distribution.
Subjects: 
trade unions
collective bargaining
union membership
income
income distribution
JEL: 
D31
J51
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.