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The level at which collective bargaining takes place is usually considered important in determining wage levels and wage inequalities. Two different situations are considered: a first in which bargaining is only multi-employer, and a second in which it is multi-level, in the sense that workers can be covered by both a multi-employer and a single-employer contract at the same time. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of these different institutional settings on pay dispersion. The study is carried out using the European Structure of Earnings Survey, which is a large dataset containing detailed matched employer-employee information for the year 1995. The countries analysed are Italy, Belgium and Spain. The empirical results generally show that wages of workers covered by only a multi-employer contract are no more compressed than those of workers covered by both multi-employer and single-employer contracts. This implies that where workers are not covered by single-employer bargaining, they receive wage supplements paid unilaterally by their employers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how European welfare states respond to reform pressures arising from European integration. We focus on the field of public pensions and examine the impact of two institutional variables that mediate the impact of reform pressures: the extent of public pension provision and the number of national political veto points. We argue that, all else equal, member-states with few veto points and a relatively small public pension sector are the most likely cases of policy change in response to Europeanization, whereas member-states with a high number of veto points and extensive public pension commitments are the least likely candidates for policy change. We test these arguments in four cases of Europeanization in three countries ( Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]