In many countries, noncompliance with minimum wage legislation is widespread, and authorities may be seen as having turned a blind eye to a legislation they have themselves passed. We show that turning a blind eye can indeed be an equilibrium phenomenon with ex post credibility, in a model of minimum wage policy with imperfect competition, imperfect enforcement and imperfect commitment. Since c...

Holdup in Oligopsonistic Labour Markets: A New Role for the Minimum Wage We consider a labour market model of oligopsonistic wage competition and show that there is a holdup problem although workers do not have any bargaining power. When a firm invests more, it pays a higher wage in order to attract workers from competitors. Because workers participate in the returns on investment while only fi...

In this paper a simultaneous-equations model of firm closing and wage determination is developed in order to analyse how wages adjust to unfavorable shocks that raise the risk of displacement through firm closing, and to what extent a wage change affects the exit likelihood. The results show that the fear of job loss generates bargaining concessions instead of compensating differentials. A nove...