Collective Bargaining, Unions, and the Wage Structure: An International Perspective

By Simon Jäger, Suresh Naidu & Benjamin Schoefer In this paper, we assess the recent economics literature on collective bargaining. Despite a declining trend in the OECD in coverage and especially union membership, a large share of formal workers around the world are still covered by collective bargaining agreements. We describe the substantial institutional variation across a variety of countries, highlighting research done with modern research designs and recently available administrative datasets. We then estimate a canonical empirical model of individual-level coverage effects...