When: Wednesday, 12 June 2024, 16:45 - 18:00
Where: Konferenzraum, NIG, 2nd floor, Universitätsstraße 7. 1010 Vienna and online
Speaker: Igor Guardiancich (University of Padova)
Event: ViPET (Vienna Seminars in Political and Economic Transformations)
For participation via Zoom, please contact: lina.ehrich@univie.ac.at
Abstract
This paper analyses the supranational political and financial pressures impacting national wage policy in European member states. It innovates the field theoretically, empirically and methodologically. Theoretically, it adopts a comprehensive approach to analyse the formulation and implementation phases of a nascent multi-level policy cycle, where the European Commission plays a pivotal role. Empirically, it uniformly codes country-specific recommendations on wage policy in the years 2011-19, as well as the reform events that occurred in EU member states over the period 2008-19,contained in the LabRef Database. Methodologically, it distinguishes between measures granting more or less protection to workers and employs mixed-effects regression models with country and year intercepts to find out that the Commission is not entirely objective when recommending wage policy, unambiguously preferring reforms reducing workers’ protection. Such (at least partly) biased approach exerts a tangible impact on national policymaking, where implementation follows a marked external conditionality logic.
