Kåre Johansen

Asset Specificity and the Political Behavior of Firms: Lobbying for Subsidies in Norway

Previous research into endogenous trade policy has described extensively the political incentives of firms with specific assets, but no studies have shown directly that firms behave as predicted. We adopt insights from transaction costs economics to develop measures of asset specificity and to investigate how variation in these measures affects the political behavior of firms. In particular, we examine the lobbying choices of Norwegian firms in the 1980s. Given available subsidy funds from Norways oil boom and some government decisions in the 1970s, firms with more specific assets faced potentially greater losses from adjusting to new activities in the face of competitive pressures and thus had greater incentives to lobby for subsidies to protect themselves. Joint contacting of Parliament and government on behalf of firm interests by representatives of both management and labor should be particularly likely where firms had specific assets. Data analysis shows that asset specificity, as indicated by R&D intensity and job immobility, predicts joint contacting independently of plausible alternative explanatory variables like firm size and export orientation.

Wage Formation, Regional Migration and Local Labour Market Tightness

Economic theory predicts that local labour market tightness affects local wage setting as well as individuals’ migration decisions. But how should we measure local labour market tightness? In this paper we show that the common practice of using the local rate of unemployment as the tightness indicator may be misplaced. Instead, we propose a human capital adjusted outflow rate from unemployment that can be computed on the basis of micro register data. This outflow rate performs better than traditional measures of regional labour market conditions in panel data analyses of regional wages and interregional migration.

Efficiency Wages, Interfirm Comparison, and Unemployment

The paper presents an efficiency wage model where worker effort depends on own wages relative both to wages of other workers in the firm and to similar workers in other firms. First, we show how the Solow conditions are modified if internal comparison effects are at work. Second, we discuss the effect of internal wage comparison on wage inequality within firms. Third, we study unemployment and relative wage determination within a general equilibrium model, and analyze the effect of technological change and various tax policies on equilibrium unemployment and relative wages. Finally, the short-run effects of aggregate demand shocks are analyzed.

The wage curve: convexity, kinks and composition effects

A detailed analysis is provided of the shape of the wage curve using annual time series for Norwegian manufacturing. The main results are summarized as follows. Unemployment affects wages significantly, and we provide evidence in favour of a monotonically decreasing but highly non-linear wage curve. The long-term unemployed exert less of a wage dampening effect than do recently laid off workers, and real wage responsiveness to unemployment seems also to be stronger with higher inflation.

Insider forces in wage determination: new evidence for Norwegian industries

Using panel data for Norwegian industries, we establish a significant permanent relation between industry wages and industry profitability. The estimated long-run insider weight is above 0.2 and stable both over time and across industries. Industry wages are significantly affected by aggregate unemployment, and the preferred wage equation implies a highly convex wage curve.

Firm profitability, regional unemployment and human capital in wage determination

This paper presents an analysis of wage formation in the Norwegian private sector using data for individual workers matched with firm level information and regional unemployment. A key issue is to test whether or not firm specific variables affect individual wages after controlling for individual specific factors and working conditions. The results imply positive effects of firm specific profitability and firm size. The elasticity of wages with respect to value added per worker and firm size is 5% and 3.3%, respectively. Empirical evidence of a downward sloping regional wage curve is also reported, while there is no support of the hypothesis of compensating wage differentials. Since data for three levels of aggregation are used, the OLS estimates of the standard errors are downward biased. Therefore, results using a random effects model are also reported, taking the multi-level structure of the data into account.

Wage Flexibility for Skilled and Unskilled Workers: New Evidence on the Norwegian Wage Curve

Empirical evidence is provided in favour of a hypothesis that wages for unskilled workers are more responsive to unemployment than wages for skilled workers. The results imply vigorous wage responsiveness to low levels of unemployment for both groups, while the wage curves become almost entirely flat for unemployment rates above 1.7 percent. One interpretation of this result is that firms have strong incentives to increase wages in order to recruit and retain workers when unemployment is below some critical level. Since unemployed workers will certainly find work, the expected costs of a job loss are small, as are costs associated with an egalitarian wage policy. Copyright Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999.

Wages, Prices and Politics: Evidence from Norway

This paper studies the empirical relevance of the close ties between a central trade union and the social democratic political party using time series data for Norway. Using a structural wage-price model we estimate that changing from a bourgeois to a social democratic government reduces manufacturing wages in the long run by 2.3 percent. This result is consistent with a wage bargaining model augmented by political preferences of the union leaders. Private service wages are not directly affected by government type, but wage spillover effects imply that the long-run dampening effect in the private service sector is around 2 percent. The results also support the proposition of the Scandinavian model of inflation that the traded goods sector is the wage leader.

Wages and Politics: Evidence from the Norwegian Public Sector

The paper presents empirical results for wage setting in the Norwegian local and central public sector. Our results imply that central and local government wages are completely autonomous processes both in the short-run and in the long-run. This suggests that the formal strong coordination of wage setting in the two sectors at the national level does not determine the final outcome. We find that a stronger central government will reduce wages in the local government sector. The evidence also suggests an electoral cycle in the local--but not in the central government sector. Copyright 2001 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd