Documents Tojerow, Ilan 9 results

"This paper is one of the first to estimate how the region in which an establishment is located affects its productivity, wage cost and cost competitiveness (i.e. its productivity-wage gap). To do so, we use detailed linked employer-employee panel data for Belgium and rely on methodological approaches from both Hellerstein and Neumark (1995) and Bartolucci (2014) to estimate dynamic panel data models at the establishment level. Our findings show that interregional differences in productivity and wages are significant but vanish almost totally, both in industry and services, when controlling for a wide range of covariates, establishment fixed effects and endogeneity. Thus, our results suggest that wage cost and productivity differentials are ceteris paribus relatively well aligned across regions."

"This study analyses the interaction between inter-industry wage differentials and the gender wage gap in six European countries using a unique harmonised matched employer-employee data set, the 1995 European Structure of Earnings Survey. Findings show the existence of significant inter-industry wage differentials in all countries for both sexes. While their structure is quite similar for men and women and across countries, their dispersion is significantly larger in countries with decentralised bargaining. These differentials are significantly and positively correlated with industry profitability. The magnitude of this correlation, however, is lower in countries with centralised and coordinated collective bargaining. Further results show that in all countries more than 80% of the gender wage gaps within industries are statistically significant. Yet, industries having the highest and the lowest gender wage gaps vary substantially across European countries. Finally, results indicate that industry effects explain between 0 and 29% of the overall gender wage gap."

"This paper investigates inter-industry wage differentials in Belgium, taking advantage of access to a unique matched employer-employee data set covering all the years from 1999 to 2005. Findings show the existence of large wage differentials among workers with the same observed characteristics and working conditions, employed in different sectors. These differentials are persistent and no particular downward or upward trend is observed. Further results indicate that ceteris paribus, workers earn significantly higher wages when employed in more profitable firms. The time dimension of our matched employer-employee data allows us to instrument firms' profitability by its lagged value. The instrumented elasticity between wages and profits is found to be quite stable over time and varies between 0.034 and 0.043. It follows that Lester's range of pay due to rent sharing fluctuates between about 24 and 37 percent of the mean wage. This rent-sharing phenomenon accounts for a large fraction of the industry wage differentials. We find indeed that the magnitude, dispersion and significance of industry wage differentials decreases sharply when controlling for profits."

"The potential failure of national industry agreements to take into account productivity levels of least productive regions has been considered as one of the causes of regional unemployment in European countries. Two solutions are generally proposed: the first, encouraged by the European commission and the OECD, consists in decentralising wage bargaining to the firm. The second solution, the regionalisation of wage bargaining, is frequently mentioned in Belgium or in Italy where regional unemployment differentials are high. The objective of this paper is to verify if the Belgian wage setting system, where industry bargaining has a national scope, indeed prevents regional productivity levels to be taken into account in wage formation. Using a very rich linked employer-employee dataset which provides detailed information on wages, productivity, and worker's and firm's characteristics, we find that regional wage differentials and regional productivity differentials within joint committees are positively correlated. Moreover, this relation is stronger (i) for joint committees where firm-level bargaining is relatively frequent and (ii) for joint committees already sub-divided along a local line. We conclude that the current Belgian wage setting system (which combines interprofessional, industry and firm level bargaining) already includes mechanisms that allow regional productivity to be taken into account. "

"This working paper examines wage differentials across sectors in Eastern and Western European countries using harmonised data from the 2002 European structure of earnings survey.The survey contains detailed information on wages, bonuses, age, education, sex, occupation, contracts, working time, sector and region. The findings show that there are large wage differentials between workers employed in different sectors. The results also suggest that wage differentials between sectors are significantly bigger in countries where wage bargaining is weakly coordinated and essentially organised at the firm or establishment level."