Efficiency Wages, Unemployment Benefits and Union—Firm Wage Bargaining: The Issue of the Choice of the Outside Option

This paper points out that there may be a logical consistency issue in choosing the reference wage in efficiency wage models. We have shown that defining the outside option in the efficiency wage logic as the market-clearing wage solves this difficulty, and is justifiable in terms of the assumed behaviour of workers and employers. The model that we examine confirms earlier findings of reinforcing effects between union-firm bargaining and efficiency wages. However, if union preferences vary between wages and employment, Summers’ reinforcing effect is no longer present for each value of the parameter describing these preferences. Above a certain threshold value of union preferences for employment, the two mechanisms do not reinforce each other anymore.