ABSTRACT
Our objective in this book has been to interrogate the intersection of statutory minimum wages and collective bargaining in a range of European countries with particular emphasis on developments in five countries—Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Spain and the UK. Our key purpose was to apply a framework rooted in the political economy approach of dynamic comparative institutional analysis to further understanding of the role played by minimum wages in the shaping of wage structures and distributional outcomes. This required a focus on institutions of relevance to wage-setting at both national and sector levels and on the role of social actors at both levels in shaping, reproducing or reforming these institutional effects.
