About Thorsten Schulten and Malte Luebker

Thorsten Schulten is senior researcher at the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) within the Hans Böckler Foundation in Düsseldorf, Germany. His main fields of work are wage policy, minimum wages, collective bargaining and labour relations in an internationally comparative perspective. Malte Luebker is a senior researcher at the Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI) of the Hans Boeckler Foundation. His work focuses on wages, wage setting institutions and income distribution.

Why Won’t Wages In Europe Rise As They Should?

by Thorsten Schulten and Malte Luebker on 9 August 2017

The economic mainstream is perplexed: growth is finally taking hold across Europe, economic forecasts have been revised upwards, and employment is expanding. The only indicator that stubbornly refuses to follow suit is wage growth, defying textbooks and economic orthodoxy alike. Bloomberg has called it the “mystery of missing wage growth,” the Financial Times writes about […]

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The Role Of Nominal Wages In Trade And Current Account Surpluses

A macroeconomically oriented wage policy in Germany in the years 2001 to 2015 would have led to a reduced growth of real net exports but would not have significantly reduced Germany’s trade and current account surpluses.A combination of macroeconomic wage policy and a support by fiscal policy making use of the financial leeway created by higher wages would have decreased the nominal trade and current account balance to a greater degree than wage policy alone. Surpluses would mainly have been reduced through an increase in imports due to an improved domestic economic development. However, for the current account balance to be in line with EU rules, much stronger financial impulses would be needed.

New Social Europe Paper

How To Deal With Poland And Hungary

Grzegorz Ekiert argues that “Hungary and Poland can no longer be considered liberal democracies. In both countries, the authoritarian institutional system has been established, giving largely unrestricted political power to the ruling party. While they are still not dictatorships, the potential for authoritarian rule increases considerably with every new legislation expanding the power of the government.” But what could the EU and its member states do in response? This paper provides answers.

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Rough Waters: European Trade Unions In A Time Of Crises

This book analyses the development of trade unions in eleven countries (Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the UK) since the early 2000s. The individual chapters focus on unions’ structural, organisational, institutional and discursive power resources. One feature in particular emerges from the turbulent European trade union landscape, namely the challenge of becoming politically more autonomous while long-standing institutional power resources are at increasing risk of being dismanteled or of losing their effectiveness. The book also includes a chapter on the changes and challenges of European trade union federations in times of crisis.

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Estimating Labour market slack in the European Union

Eurofound’s latest research report looks at labour market slack – the shortfall between the volume of work desired by workers and the actual volume of work available. There were close to 23 million unemployed people of working age in the EU in 2015 but around 50 million people in a broader category of labour slack, encompassing inactive people wishing to work and underemployed, involuntary part-timers as well as the unemployed.

About Thorsten Schulten and Malte Luebker

Why Won’t Wages In Europe Rise As They Should?

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