Union Wage Bargaining and Economic Growth

Unemployment is still the most pressing economic problem in Europe. It is consensus among most economists that the major fraction of the unemployment problem is not caused by short term business cycle factors, but is caused by structural problems. Thus, unemployment in Europe is a long term phenomenon. With this the question arises whether unemployment also affects the rate of growth of an economy. This book offers a unified approach to analyse this question by incorporating union wage bargaining into a wide variety of growth models. It is shown that unions might foster economic growth, but this result is very sensitive to the exact specification of the model under consideration. In general, imperfect labour markets have an effect on the rate of growth and as such should be considered relevant when thinking about economic growth.