The Catch-up Process of Relative Wages in European Union New Member States

Abstract

In 2004, European Union underwent the largest single expansion, both in terms territory, number of states and population. After that, economic effects of accession for new member states have been studied with different aspects in European Union integration literature. This paper focus on labour market aspect and it is aimed to investigate the existence of catch-up process for eight EU new member states' relative wages. The relative wages are measured by a ratio of new member states to old member with Germany as a representative country and the convergence analysis is applied to testify the process of wage disparities. The results show the existence of convergence and that the wages in new member states have been closer to high-wage level countries' after joining EU.