Does employers' association (EA) membership affect wages? Such effects, positive or negative, could follow from increased productivity, employer collusion, or other channels. We analyse this question drawing on matched employer-employee panel data, including time-varying EA affiliation and worker mobility. We consider the case of private schools in Portugal, 2010-2020, and its single EA, and develop a method to define the sector's scope. We find that school fixed effects reduce the EA wage premium considerably. However, such positive premium remains, especially when focusing on the key occupation of the industry (teachers) and when considering EA firms that follow firm-specific (non-EA) collective agreements. We also find that there is an EA wage premium for schools that join the EA, while the EA premium does not disappear for schools that leave the EA.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.