Claudio Lucifora

We study how individuals with different personality traits exhibit different personal propensity to unionise. While traditional models of trade union membership state that workers are rational decision makers and highlight benefits and costs of union membership, a growing literature investigates the effect of other factors on individuals’ decisions...

The present study uses data for workplaces in all sectors of ten European countries to investigate whether firms that have introduced new forms of work organisation are more likely to use variable pay schemes. Also the role played by institutional forces and employees’ representatives is investigated. New regimes of work organisation are characterised by both new work practices – such as teams, job rotation, multitasking and flat hierarchies – and higher levels of direct participation by employees. We find that, in general, schemes of variable pay are more likely to be introduced where new work practices are in place. The presence of employees’ representatives increases the probability of variable pay, but only when they co-operate with the management in decision-making.

This paper investigates the structure of within-establishment wage inequality in Italy, using linked employer-employee data (European Structure of Earnings Survey). The effect of work organi- sation practices, pay policies, collective bargaining procedures and industrial relations settings are analysed in the context of wage differentials in the firm. The main findings suggest that employees’ characteristics, work organisation practices and firm size are relevant in shaping pay inequality within establishments. Decentralised bargaining is shown to be associated with higher (unconditional) within-establishment wage dispersion; however, when checking both for worker and firm heterogeneity, the association changes sign or is not (statistically) significant. Finally, when the endogenous sorting of establishments is adequately modelled, no causal effect of decentralised bargaining on within-establishment pay inequality is detected.