Firm Wage Differentials in Imperfect Labour Markets: The Role of Market Power and Industrial Relations in Rent Splitting between Workers and Firms

大量研究发现，不同的雇主给同等生产率的工人支付不同的工资。显然，这种持续的企业工资差异与竞争激烈的劳动力市场是不一致的，在竞争激烈的劳动力市场中，企业将市场工资视为既定的，并充当工资接受者的角色。相反，他们指出，在一个不完美的劳动力市场中，雇主和工人都获得了可观的就业租金，双方在工资形成过程中都拥有一定的市场力量。在此背景下，本建议的主要目的是更牢固地理解，在不完善的劳动力市场中，就业租金如何在工人和雇主之间分配，以及工会和劳资委员会等劳动力市场机构如何影响租金的分配。在这一点上，它不仅有望对工资形成过程和重要劳动力市场趋势（如工会化程度下降和工人共同决定）的可能后果提供新的见解，而且有望为重要的公共政策辩论提供信息，比如应该赋予有组织的劳工哪些权利。具体来说，该项目将做出四项贡献。首先，现有的关于租金分担的研究，即企业绩效对工人工资的影响，缺乏可靠的企业绩效外生变化来确定因果租金分担效应。我们将使用德国的官方企业数据（“Amtliche Firmendaten f<e:1> r Deutschland”；AFiD），其中包含企业随时间变化的能源成本信息，从而使我们能够确定因果租金分担效应。其次，大多数共享租房文件都遗漏了工作时间的信息，尽管共享租房可能不仅通过月工资或日薪，而且还通过工作时间。将AFiD数据与德国收入结构调查（“verdienststruckturerhebung”）合并，使我们能够衡量先前研究中的偏差，这些研究没有以小时为基础使用公司业绩和工资指标。这些丰富的数据进一步使我们能够研究集体谈判协议覆盖的企业和未覆盖的企业在租金分担方面的差异。第三，现有的租金共享文献采用的企业绩效和工资指标缺乏理论依据。使用就业研究所（LIAB）的关联雇主-雇员数据，我们可以构建这样的适当措施。特别是，这些数据使我们能够根据一种将工资分解为工人特定部分和雇主特定部分的方法，充分计算企业工资溢价（Abowd, Kramarz, Margolis 1999）。我们可以进一步研究租金分担是否取决于工会或劳资委员会的存在，并揭示自上世纪90年代以来企业工资溢价扩大的可能原因。第四，LIAB数据还允许我们对企业垄断力量的决定因素进行首次调查，以及企业工资溢价是否随企业的市场力量及其劳资关系制度而变化。

Studies are legion that find that equally productive workers are paid different wages by different employers. Obviously, such persistent firm wage differentials are at odds with a competitive labour market where firms take the market wage as given and act as wage takers. Instead, they point at an imperfect labour market where significant employment rents accrue to both employers and workers and both parties possess some market power in the wage formation process. Against this backdrop, the main purpose of this proposal is to grasp a firmer understanding of how employment rents are split between workers and employers in imperfect labour markets and how labour market institutions, such as unions and works councils, influence the distribution of rents. In that it not only promises new insights into the wage formation process and the likely consequences of important labour market trends like falling unionisation and worker codetermination, but also promises to inform important public policy debates, such as which rights should be granted to organised labour.Specifically, the project will make four contributions. First, existing studies that investigate rent sharing, i.e. the impact of firm performance on workers’ wages, lack credible exogenous variation in firm performance to identify the causal rent-sharing effect. We will use the Official Firm Data for Germany (“Amtliche Firmendaten für Deutschland”; AFiD) that contain information on firms’ energy costs over time and thus allows us to identify the causal rent-sharing effect. Second, most rent-sharing papers miss information on working hours, though rent sharing may not only run through monthly or daily wages but also through working hours. Merging the AFiD data to the German Structure of Earnings Survey (“Verdienststrukturerhebung”) allows us to gauge the bias in previous studies that did not use firm performance and wage indicators on an hourly basis. These rich data further enable us to study differences in rent sharing among firms covered by collective bargaining agreements and uncovered firms. Third, the existing rent-sharing literature employs firm performance and wage measures that lack theoretical justification. Using the linked employer-employee data of the Institute for Employment Research (LIAB) allows us to construct such adequate measures. In particular, the data permit us to adequately calculate firm wage premia based on an approach that decomposes wages into worker-specific and employer-specific components (Abowd, Kramarz, Margolis 1999). We are further able to study whether rent sharing depends on the presence of unions or works councils, and to shed light on the likely causes of the widening of firm wage premia since the 1990s. Fourth, the LIAB data also permits us to undertake the first investigation into the determinants of firms’ monopsony power and whether firm wage premia vary with firms’ market power and their industrial relations regime.