The Economics of Labor Unions

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The Economics of Labor Unions

9781840645262 Edward Elgar Publishing
Edited by Alison L. Booth, Professor of Economics, University of Essex, UK and Fellow, CEPR (Centre for Economic Policy Research), UK
Publication Date: 2002 ISBN: 978 1 84064 526 2 Extent: 1,208 pp
This comprehensive collection brings together an impressive range of papers on the economics of labor unions. Some of these are classics, and others are less well known – included because they cover significant but under-researched areas, or because they raise interesting questions that as yet remain unanswered.

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Critical Acclaim
Contributors
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This comprehensive collection brings together an impressive range of papers on the economics of labor unions. Some of these are classics, and others are less well known – included because they cover significant but under-researched areas, or because they raise interesting questions that as yet remain unanswered.

The study of labor unions has long fascinated economists. Over the last quarter of the twentieth century there has been a tremendous evaluation of research in this area. This blossoming occurred with the growth of labor economics as a discipline separate from industrial relations, and with the development of micro data sets and the dissemination of sophisticated new micro-econometric techniques with which to analyse them.

These volumes include papers that not only span the most important topics in the economics of labor unions, but also offer a useful overview of the field and its methodology. They will prove invaluable both to researchers and practitioners.
Critical Acclaim
‘The two volumes represent an essential collection in all university libraries and are outstanding reference tools of a widely dispersed literature for researchers and students in labour economics and industrial relations (note that many of the included articles are not easily available in the libraries of many South-Eastern Universities and research centres).’
– Darko Marinkovic and Bruno S. Sergi, South-East Europe Review

‘Students of labor markets will welcome this intelligently-chosen compendium of classic papers on the economics of trade unions. This two-volume collection brings together eminent contributions to research over a period of more than fifty years. Here is the place to look for what economists have to say about the role of unions in the determination of productivity, wages, employment, work hours, and a host of other things. It provides a valuable opportunity to take stock of where we are in this class of research and how we arrived here.’
– John Pencavel, Stanford University, US

‘At a time at which unions struggle to redefine themselves, and governments think about the right set of labor market institutions, this collection puts together what economists know about unions. No ideology masquerading as science here. Just all the classics.’
– Olivier Blanchard, MIT, US
Contributors
47 articles, dating from 1946 to 2001
Contributors include: L. Calmfors, D. Card, H. Farber, R. Flanagan, R. Freeman, P. Kuhn, S. Machin, S.J. Nickell, J. Pencavel, M. Stewart
Contents
Contents:
Volume I
Acknowledgements
Introduction Alison L. Booth
PART I ALLOCATIVE AND TECHNICAL INEFFICIENCY
1. Albert Rees (1963), ‘The Effects of Unions of Resource Allocation’
2. Greg J. Duncan and Frank P. Stafford (1980), ‘Do Union Members Receive Compensating Wage Differentials?’
3. S. Rosen (1969), ‘Trade Union Power, Threat Effects and the Extent of Organization’
4. Harry G. Johnson and Peter Mieszkowski (1970), ‘The Effects of Unionization on the Distribution of Income: A General Equilibrium Approach’
5. Paul A. Grout (1984), ‘Investment and Wages in the Absence of Binding Contracts: A Nash Bargaining Approach’
PART II UNIONS AS EFFICIENCY ENHANCING
6. Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoff (1979), ‘The Two Faces of Unionism’
7. Roger L. Faith and Joseph D. Reid, Jr (1987), ‘An Agency Theory of Unionism’
PART III UNION BARGAINING POWER AND MEMBERSHIP
8. Samuel Bowles (1985), ‘The Production Process in a Competitive Economy: Walrasian, Neo-Hobbesian, and Marxian Models’
9. Alison L. Booth (1985), ‘The Free Rider Problem and a Social Custom Model of Trade Union Membership’
10. Alison L. Booth and Monojit Chatterji (1995), ‘Union Membership and Wage Bargaining when Membership is not Compulsory’
11. Henry S. Farber (1983), ‘The Determination of the Union Status of Workers’
PART IV UNIONS AND IMPERFECT COMPETITION
12. Steve Dowrick (1989), ‘Union-oligopoly Bargaining’
13. Mark B. Stewart (1990), ‘Union Wage Differentials, Product Market Influences and the Division of Rents’
14. Stephen Nickell (1999), ‘Product Markets and Labour Markets’
PART V MODELLING UNION BEHAVIOUR
15. Andrew J. Oswald (1985), ‘The Economic Theory of Trade Unions: An Introductory Survey’
16. Henry S. Farber (1978), ‘Individual Preferences and Union Wage Determination: The Case of the United Mine Workers’
17. Douglas H. Blair and David L. Crawford (1984), ‘Labor Union Objectives and Collective Bargaining’
18. Ken Binmore, Ariel Rubinstein and Asher Wolinsky (1986), ‘The Nash Bargaining Solution in Economic Modelling’
19. Wassily Leontief (1946), ‘The Pure Theory of the Guaranteed Annual Wage Contract’
20. Ian M. McDonald and Robert M. Solow (1981), ‘Wage Bargaining and Employment’
21. Thomas E. MaCurdy and John H. Pencavel (1986), ‘Testing between Competing Models of Wage and Employment Determination in Unionized Markets’
22. Alan Manning (1987), ‘An Integration of Trade Union Models in a Sequential Bargaining Framework’
23. George E. Johnson (1990), ‘Work Rules, Featherbedding, and Pareto-optimal Union-Management Bargaining’
24. Peter Kuhn and Jacques Robert (1989), ‘Seniority and Distribution in a Two-worker Trade Union’
PART VI UNIONS AND STRIKES
25. John Kennan and Robert Wilson (1993), ‘Bargaining with Private Information’
26. Joseph S. Tracy (1987), ‘An Empirical Test of an Asymmetric Information Model of Strikes’
PART VII CHOICE OF BARGAINING STRUCTURE
27. Henrik Horn and Asher Wolinsky (1988), ‘Worker Substitutability and Patterns of Unionisation’
28. Byoung Heon Jun (1989), ‘Non-cooperative Bargaining and Union Formation’
Name Index

Volume II
Acknowledgements
An Introduction by the editor to both volumes appears in Volume I
PART I THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF UNIONS
1. Peter Kuhn (1998), ‘Unions and the Economy: What We Know; What We Should Know’
2. Stephen Machin, Mark Stewart and John Van Reenen (1993), ‘The Economic Effects of Multiple Unionism: Evidence from the 1984 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey’
3. David Card (2001), ‘The Effect of Unions of Wage Inequality in the US Labor Market’
4. Richard B. Freeman (1984), ‘Longitudinal Analyses of the Effects of Trade Unions’
5. Chris Robinson (1989), ‘The Joint Determination of Union Status and Union Wage Effects: Some Tests of Alternative Models’
6. George Jakubson (1991), ‘Estimation and Testing of the Union Wage Effect Using Panel Data’
7. Martyn J. Andrews, Mark B. Stewart, Joanna K. Swaffield and Richard Upward (1998), ‘The Estimation of Union Wage Differentials and the Impact of Methodological Choices’
PART II UNIONS AND HOURS OF WORK
8. William M. Boal and John Pencavel (1994), ‘The Effects of Labor Unions on Employment, Wages, and Days of Operation: Coal Mining in West Virginia’
9. Alison Booth and Fabio Schiantarelli (1987), ‘The Employment Effects of a Shorter Working Week’
PART III PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONISM
10. Richard B. Freeman (1986), ‘Unionism Comes to the Public Sector’
11. Carl M. Stevens (1966), ‘Is Compulsory Arbitration Compatible With Bargaining?’
12. Caroline Minter Hoxby (1996), ‘How Teachers’ Unions Affect Education Production’
PART IV UNIONS AND THE MACRO-ECONOMY
13. Robert J. Flanagan (1999), ‘Macroeconomic Performance and Collective Bargaining: An International Perspective’
14. Lars Calmfors and John Driffill (1988), ‘Bargaining Structure, Corporatism and Macroeconomic Performance’
15. Richard Layard, Stephen Nickell and Richard Jackman (1991), ‘Wage Bargaining and Unions’
16. Huw Dixon and Neil Rankin (1994), ‘Imperfect Competition and Macroeconomics: A Survey’
17. Alan Manning (1993), ‘Wage Bargaining and the Phillips Curve: The Identification and Specification of Aggregate Wage Equations’
18. David Soskice and Torben Iversen (2000), ‘The Nonneutrality of Monetary Policy with Large Price or Wage Setters’
PART V UNIONS AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT
19. Robin Naylor (1999), ‘Union Wage Strategies and International Trade’
Name Index
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