Sunday, May 20, 2007

Wages and Productivity in Brazil

Renato Colistete has a very interesting paper in the new number of Journal of Economic History. He asks: why wages lagged behind labour productivity in post II War Brazil? His answer is: commies and anti-commies. The unions were dominated by left-wingers and industrialists avoided negotiations. Therefore:
"Brazil never experienced a corporatist accommodation between labor and managers based on shared goals of economic growth and real wage increases tied to productivity.
Instead it witnessed a widening gap between wages and productivity"

I strongly recommend reading the paper! And you should better run because only the most recent number of the JEH is available for free.

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