This book offers an extensive survey and synthesis of the economic literature on trade unions and collective bargaining and their impact on micro-and macro-economic outcomes. The authors demonstrate the effects of collective bargaining in different country settings and time periods. A comprehensive reference, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of labor policy as well as to policy makers and anyone with an interest in the economic consequences of unionism.
Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff’s now classic 1984 book What Do Unions Do? stimulated an enormous theoretical and empirical literature on the economic impact of trade unions. Trade unions continue to be a significant feature of many labor markets, particularly in developing countries, and issues of labor market regulations and labor institutions remain critically important to researchers and policy makers. The relations between unions and management can range between cooperation and conflict; unions have powerful offsetting wage and non-wage effects that economists and other social scientists have long debated. Do the benefits of unionism exceed the costs to the economy and society writ large, or do the costs exceed the benefits? The Economics of Trade Unions offers the first comprehensive review, analysis and evaluation of the empirical literature on the microeconomic effects of trade unions using the tools of meta-regression analysis to identify and quantify the economic impact of trade unions, as well as to correct research design faults, the effects of selection bias and model misspecification. This volume makes use of a unique dataset of hundreds of empirical studies and their reported estimates of the microeconomic impact of trade unions. Written by three authors who have been at the forefront of this research field (including the co-author of the original volume, What Do Unions Do?), this book offers an overview of a subject that is of huge importance to scholars of labor economics, industrial and employee relations, and human resource management, as well as those with an interest in meta-analysis.
Study of the impact of trade unions on working conditions and labour relations in the USA - based on a comparison of unionized workers and nonunionized workers, examines wage determination, fringe benefits, wage differentials, employment security, labour productivity, etc.; discusses trade union power and incidence of corruption among trade union officers; notes declining rate of trade unionization in the private sector. Graphs and references.
This book was accepted in 1999 as doctoral thesis (Dr. oec. publ. ) by the faculty of economics of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in Munich. It won the dissertation price of the Alumni-Club of the economics faculty in the academic year 2000. Financial assistance by the German Research Asso ciation (DFG) for printing costs is gratefully acknowledged. I have to thank the people behind the B\'IF,X-project, in particular Donald Knuth and Leslie Lamport, for their wonderful typesetting program. The supervisors of my thesis were Prof. Dr. G. Flaig and Prof. Dr. D. Marin. I would like thank both for their thorough reading of the book and their ideas and critical remarks. lowe much gratitude to my academic teacher Prof. Dr. G. Flaig for many insightful conversations about modern time series econometrics, asymptotic theory and data problems. His empha sis on clear theory combined with sound econometric methods formed my personal ideal of how to do applied economics. After he left the university in 1998I had the opportunity to continue my work at the Center for Economic Studies. Prof. Dr. H. -W. Sinn and my new colleaguesat CES provided a stim ulating environment for the completion of my dissertation. Finally, I want to thank my parents, my sister and my friends for being there and sharing my cheers and worries. Munich, October 2000 Michael Reutter Our main concern in philosophy and in science should be the search fortruth. Justification is not an aim; and brilliance and cleverness as such are boring.
What happens if an employer cuts wages by one cent? Much of labor economics is built on the assumption that all the workers will quit immediately. Here, Alan Manning mounts a systematic challenge to the standard model of perfect competition. Monopsony in Motion stands apart by analyzing labor markets from the real-world perspective that employers have significant market (or monopsony) power over their workers. Arguing that this power derives from frictions in the labor market that make it time-consuming and costly for workers to change jobs, Manning re-examines much of labor economics based on this alternative and equally plausible assumption. The book addresses the theoretical implications of monopsony and presents a wealth of empirical evidence. Our understanding of the distribution of wages, unemployment, and human capital can all be improved by recognizing that employers have some monopsony power over their workers. Also considered are policy issues including the minimum wage, equal pay legislation, and caps on working hours. In a monopsonistic labor market, concludes Manning, the "free" market can no longer be sustained as an ideal and labor economists need to be more open-minded in their evaluation of labor market policies. Monopsony in Motion will represent for some a new fundamental text in the advanced study of labor economics, and for others, an invaluable alternative perspective that henceforth must be taken into account in any serious consideration of the subject.
Fueled by the ongoing debate about the distributive effects of the Washington Consensus, the dynamics of poverty and inequality have returned to the center of attention of academic scholars, policymakers, and the public at large. The main obstacles to analyzing this issue are incomplete income and consumption data in developing countries. Hence, the book presents a new dynamic cross-survey microsimulation methodology and applies it to generate the database for a detailed case study on Bolivia during the era of structural reforms. Building upon this database, the dynamics of different dimensions of poverty and inequality in 1989 - 2002 are analyzed with various microeconomic tools. The empirical results suggest that in the case of Bolivia the impact of the Washington Consensus has neither lived up to the expectations of its proponents nor to the fears of its critics.
With the financial crisis and Great Recession, some economists have begun to question the orthodox approach to production and capital/labor relations over the years. This orthodoxy thrown into question due to concerns of poor corporate decision-making, corporate capture of regulators, perceived rewards for failure, and uneven productivity growth.
Collective bargaining and workers’ voice are often discussed in the past rather than in the future tense, but can they play a role in the context of a rapidly changing world of work? This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the functioning of collective bargaining systems and workers’ voice arrangements across OECD countries, and new insights on their effect on labour market performance today.
