The rules and institutions of collective bargaining are widely held to have an adverse effect on employment and thus on unemployment. These views are analysed, and it is argued that many industrial relations institutions provide a much greater degree of flexibility for firms than is often realised. It is often forgotten that collective agreements involve the agreement of employers who are thus ...

This paper reexamines the game-theoretic bargaining theory from logic and Artificial Intelligence perspectives. We present an axiomatic characterization of the logical solutions to bargaining problems. A bargaining situation is described in propositional logic with numerical representation of bargainers’ preferences. A solution to the n-person bargaining problems is proposed based on the maxmin...

1998, vol. 53, n° 3 0034-379X In recent years, there has been a trend in many countries toward a decentralization of collective bargaining structures. This study employs two methods to provide a deeper analysis than previous studies of the forces that determine bargaining structure. First, it builds a framework to analyze bargaining structure by integrating previous theoretical and empirical wo...

The paper raises a number of issues regarding the ethical character of the Coalition government s Australian Workplace Relations Act. While key principles such as freedom of association and freedom of choice are incorporated into the legislation, it is argued that equity is a higher order ethic. On the face of it, the language of the legislation addresses equity, but notwithstanding the Coaliti...

This paper develops a bargaining model of wage and employment determination for the public sector. The solution to the model generates structural wage and employment equations that are estimated using data from New York State teacher-school district collective bargaining agreements. An advantage of this approach is that the major collective bargaining models (monopoly union, right to manage, ef...

We analyse the interaction between different labour market institutions in Germany, a country with a long tradition of strong bargaining partners. A number of studies have established that industry-level bargaining exerts a moderating role on firm-level co-determination: works councils generate rather than redistribute rents in plants covered by collective bargaining agreements. This work analy...

This paper examines the role of regional unemployment in wage determination. Recent empirical studies have found a negative relationship between local unemployment and the level of wages. The resulting downward sloping curve in the wage-unemployment space has become known as “the wage curve.” While the existence of the wage curve has been well established, little is known about what gives rise ...

This paper examines the distributional consequences of the recent transformation of the industrial relations system in Australia, with a shift from a collective bargaining system with comprehensive involvement of trade unions at both the national and industry levels to a system based on workplace bargaining with no union involvement. The paper presents the results of regression analyses which r...