Economic Development and Strikes: An Examination of the Haas and Stack Model

The evidence presented by Haas and Stack (1983) suggests that a parabolic relationship exists between a nation's level of industrialization and the strike activity among its labor force. Their model is tested using data from a different time period. Criticisms of the original model, including problems of heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation and multicollinearity, are addressed here. The findings of this study support only marginally the conclusions reached by Haas and Stack, in that the relationship is confirmed to be curvilinear.