A Critical Comparison of Models of Strike Activity.

This paper presents a critical comparison of four of the major, and more influential, models explaining strike activity: strike activity and associated costs (Reder and Neumann), incomplete information (Ashenfelter and Johnson), asymmetric information (Hayes), and a world-wise approach (Tracy). The models are shown to provide substantially different theoretical explanations for strike activity, however, the prescribed estimating equations contain such similar sets of variables that nested and non-nested testing procedures do not provide a clear statistical ranking. It is, nevertheless, possible to explore common themes and predictions across the models and to develop an electric model in terms of the relationships that are found to occur in the data set. Copyright 1993 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd