The dramatic decline in unionization over the last decade is investigated in the context of a supply/demand model of union status determination. Data from surveys conducted in 1977 and 1984 are used to decompose the decline into components due to a drop in the demand for union representation and...

Using CPS data for 1977-2002, the author tests the standard wage determination model's prediction that the threat of union organization increases nonunion wages and reduces the union/nonunion wage differential. The results are mixed. Estimates employing the predicted probability of union...

This study develops two models of the behavior of interest arbitrators in which the arbitrator has some exogenous notion of an equitable settlement and yet is also influenced to some extent by the positions of the parties. The author argues that it is the arbitrator's notion of an equitable...

This paper develops a model of the determination of the union status of workers that allows for the possibility of queuing for union jobs. The empirical results derived, using a sample from the University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, are supportive of the queuing hypothesis. The...

The author documents four facts regarding the pattern of NLRB-supervised representation election activity over the period 1952-98: (1) election activity fell sharply and discontinuously beginning in the mid-1970s, after increasing for two decades; (2) unions' election win rate declined less...

New data on medical malpractice claims against a single hospital in which a direct measure of the quality of medical care is available are used to investigate the roles of the negligence rule and incomplete information in the dispute settlement process in medical malpractice. We find that the...

Long-term employment relationships have long been an important feature of the labor market in the United States. However, increased international competition and the wave of corporate downsizing in the 1990s raised concerns that long-term employment relationships in the United States were...