This paper reviews a significant body of evidence regarding the impact of trade unionism on economic performance and seeks to evaluate antithetical views regarding whether estimated differences between union and nonunion workers and firms represent: illusions created by poor experiments, real...

In this paper we focus our attention on the question of whether union/nonunion differences in nonwage outcomes can, in fact, be explained in terms of standard price-theoretic responses to real wage effects, as opposed to the real effect of unionism on economic behavior. We reach three basic...

This study presents new estimates of collective bargaining coverage and union membership for detailed U.S. industries. It compares the new coverage and membership figures with each other and with figures derived by researchers for the early 1960's and analyzes the divergences. This analysis...

Our research demonstrates that the view of unions as organizations whose chief function is to raise wages is seriously misleading. For in addition to raising wages, unions have significant non-wage effects which influence diverse aspects of modern industrial life. By providing workers with a...

This paper summarized some new evidence concerning the impact of collective bargaining on productivity for workers of a given quality working with the same amount of capital. The new findings, which are based on econometric investigations, indicate that in many sectors,in particular...

This paper analyses the relation between the percent of workers organized in a product market and the wages received by union workers and by nonunion workers. It argues that the greater is the union coverage of a sector, the lower will be the elasticity of demand for the product of organized...

This paper presents two key facts which call into question the value of unemployment rates as barometers of labor market tightness. First, while both unemployment rates and unsatisfied labor demand proxies perform reasonably well on their own in compensation growth equations, in models which...

This paper presents new survey evidence that relative protection against job loss grows with length of service, independent of their net value to the firm. This protection makes good sense given that at most companies employees appear to earn less than their value marginal product in the early...

This study investigates where and when last-in-first-out permanent layoff policies seem to go hand in hand with compensation policies under which the net value of senior workers appears to be less than that of their junior peers. The investigation relies upon both the approximately 260 usable...

This paper studies the wage determination process for a group of managerial employees in a major U.S. airline. As would be expected, those with greater-than-average schooling, pre-company labor market experience, and company service receive greater-than-average earnings. The analysis also...