Facts and Fantasies about Wage Setting and Collective Bargaining
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In this article, we document and discuss salient features of collective bargaining systems in the OECD countries, with the goal of debunking some misconceptions and myths and revitalizing the general interest in wage setting and collective bargaining. We hope that such an interest may help close the gap between how economists tend to model wage setting and how wages are actually set. Canonical models of competitive labor markets, monopsony, and search and matching all assume a decentralized wage setting where individual firms and workers determine wages. In most advanced economies, however, it is common that firms or employer associations bargain with unions over wages, producing collective bargaining systems. We show that the characteristics of these systems vary in important ways across advanced economies, with regards to both the scope and the structure of collective bargaining.
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Norway is a coordinated labor market whose institutions differ sharply from those of the United States and the United Kingdom and, more subtly, from those of other Nordic countries.
“Second, Norway is a coordinated labor market whose institutions differ sharply from those of the United States and the United Kingdom and, more subtly, from those of other Nordic countries (Bhuller, Moene, Mogstad, & Vestad, 2022;Iacono, 2018;Mogstad, Salvanes, & Torsvik, 2025).”
From Labor Market Consequences of Generative AI: Early Evidence from Norway (2026) · cites this paper as Bhuller et al., 2022
The Union Coordination section (page not provided) describes Norway as highly coordinated and contrasts Scandinavian bargaining systems with the United States’ low coordination. The Union Density and Bargaining Coverage section (page not provided) also identifies the United States and United Kingdom as having the lowest union influence. The passages do not establish the claimed, subtler institutional differences between Norway and other Nordic countries; they largely describe those countries together. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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Research works printed but not linked: 27
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Cited by
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Labor Market Consequences of Generative AI: Early Evidence from Norway
Facius, D., & Iacono, R. (2026) · CESifo Working Papers · doi:10.65864/8a4auliirt
- Authors
- Bhuller, M., Moene, K. O., Mogstad, M., & Vestad, O. L.
- Affiliations
- Statistics Norway (NO)
- University of Oslo (NO)
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Economic Perspectives
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2022-11-01
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 29-52
- ISSN
- 0895-3309 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4308472288
- Cited by
- 98
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 35 · 2023: 18
- FWCI
- 29.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Journal of Economic Perspectives (publishedVersion)
- NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Labor Movements and Unions
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Industrial relations › Legal and Labor Studies
- Keywords
- wage determination, collective bargaining, union bargaining, monopsony, search and matching, labor market models, employers' associations, OECD countries
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