TY  - JOUR
AU  - Blanchflower,David G.
AU  - Oswald,Andrew J.
AU  - Garrett,Mario D.
TI  - Insider Power in Wage Determination
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 3179
PY  - 1990
Y2  - August 1990
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3179
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w3179.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David G. Blanchflower
Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics
6106 Rockefeller Hall
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH  03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2536
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: David.G.Blanchflower@Dartmouth.EDU

Andrew Oswald
Department of Economics
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
England
Tel: 44-01203-5235
Fax: 44-01203-5230
E-Mail: a.j.oswald@warwick.ac.uk
AB  - The paper argues that wage determination is best seen as a kind of rent sharing in which workers' bargaining power is influenced by conditions in the external labour market. It uses British establishment data from 1984 to show that pay depends upon a blend of insider pressure (including the employer's financial performance and oligopolistic position) and outsider pressure (including external wages and unemployment). Lester's feasible 'range' of wages appears typically to be between 8% and 22% of pay. Estimates of the unemployment elasticity of the wage lie in a narrow band around -0.1.
ER  -