About the project
Real labor markets depart in important ways from a canonical model of the competitive labor market;
- First and foremost, collective bargaining between worker unions and employer confederations over wages and other important terms of the employment relationship is a key institutional aspect of the Nordic labor markets, as well as of labor markets in most OECD countries.
- Secondly, most labor markets are characterized by some level of information friction, either with respect to the availability of jobs, the quality of workers, or the value of a match between a worker and a firm.
The UNIFRIC research project will investigate the role of collective bargaining and information frictions in the labor market. This will be accomplished by utilizing a unique combination of detailed Norwegian worker-level data on skills, wages, job mobility, and union membership, firm-level data on vacancy posting, hiring behavior, and participation in employer confederations, and collection and digitization of collective agreements.
Objectives
- The PRIMARY objective of this project is to provide new empirical evidence on i) the role of collective agreements and bargaining structure on wage setting and gender gaps, ii) the role of workers' board representation on firm behavior, iii) the role of collective agreements in the context of globalization, iv) the impacts of expansion of internet technology on the matching of workers and firms, v) the long-run implications of internet expansion on aggregate unemployment and sorting in the labor market.
- The SECONDARY objective of this project is to promote the empirical labor economics research environment in the Department of Economics at the University of Oslo, by extending and formalizing research collaboration between the PI's core team at the University of Oslo, experienced international scholars from the University of Chicago and Uppsala University, and young Norwegian researchers at Statistics Norway and Norges Bank.
Financing
The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway under the FRIHUMSAM Young Research Talents program with NOK 8 million over a four year period from August 2018 until July 2022.