In most cases, coverage under our nation’s employment laws boils down to the question of whether or not the individuals in question are “employees” and whether or not the entity in question is an “employer.” Significantly, however, in a growing number of cases, where employer status is...

This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model in which the public and the private sector interact in the labor market. Previous studies that analyze the labor market effects of public sector employment and wages have mostly assumed exogenous rules for public wage and public employment....

The laws eliminating or severely restricting the collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions passed since 2011 are one of the most important developments in both workplace law and politics in recent memory. Among other things, public-sector workers now comprise more than half of all...

There are two divergent views on the role of public sector collective bargaining in American law. The first, and generally older, view is that public sector collective bargaining undermines democratic government, allowing organized employees to interfere with the administration of the law for...

Rates of unionization in the United States today are at historic lows and are unlikely to rebound. However, there is one sector in which organized labor is growing in strength: government. This has severe implications for the future of public finances for state and local governments across the...

Employee share ownership is growing increasingly important. This paper studies employee share ownership in an economy with one monopoly union for each firm. We modify an implicit contract model by adding dividend income to the usual wage income. Union members differ in exogenous stock endowments...

The U.S. labor share of income has been on a secular downward trajectory since thebeginning of the new millennium. Using data that are disaggregated across both state andindustry, we show the decline in the labor share is broad-based but the extent of the fallvaries greatly. Exploiting a new...

Unions are often stigmatized as being a source of inefficiency due to higher collective bargaining outcomes. This is in stark contrast with the descriptive evidence presented in this paper. Larger firms choose to export and are also more likely to adopt collective bargaining. We rationalize...

Conventional wisdom suggests that labor unions raise worker wages while the newer empirical literature finds only negligible earnings effects. I reconcile this apparent contradiction by arguing that collective bargaining targets fringe benefits. Using U.S. firm-level data from the BEA...

The German law on co-determination at the plant level (Betriebsverfassungsgesetz) stipulates that works councilors are neither to be financially rewarded nor penalized for their activities. This regulation contrasts with publicized instances of excessive payments. The divergence has sparked a...