1887

OECD Economics Department Working Papers

Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.

The views expressed in these papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries.

English, French

Wage Setting in Finland

Increasing Flexibility in Centralised Wage Agreements

The centralised wage agreements have helped to contain inflation. There is evidence that wage increases were more moderate when a central agreement was concluded than in periods when no central agreement was reached. Nevertheless, there is also evidence that centralised wage setting has had some drawbacks in terms of reducing employment among low-skilled and younger workers because of high minimum wage floors. In the current wage setting system there are components that allow for greater relative wage flexibility. These should be used more extensively. The role of the government in future agreements should be to encourage greater relative wage flexibility within the current bargaining framework. This paper relates to the 2006 Economic Survey of Finland (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/finland).

English

Keywords: labour costs, wage-setting, labour markets
JEL: J3: Labor and Demographic Economics / Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs; J52: Labor and Demographic Economics / Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining / Dispute Resolution: Strikes, Arbitration, and Mediation; Collective Bargaining; E24: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy / Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity; J50: Labor and Demographic Economics / Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining / Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining: General; J23: Labor and Demographic Economics / Demand and Supply of Labor / Labor Demand
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