We analyse how different labour market institutions--employment protection versus ‘flexicurity’--affect technology adoption in unionised firms. We consider trade unions’ incentives to oppose or endorse labour-saving technology and firms’ incentives to invest in such technology. Increased...

With the defeat of the federal Labor Government and the consequent end of the Accord, it has almost become the received wisdom to attribute to the Accord the blame for the decline in union membership and union density during the 1980s and the 1990s. The decline in union density has arisen not...

This paper traces the process whereby the apprenticeship system came to be regulated by industrial tribunals during the period 1900 to 1930. It describes how the regulation emerged, the motives that underpinned it, and the wider political debate about the apprenticeship system at the time. It...

This paper uses survey data to look at the union membership by analysing decisions of employees to join and leave (exit) unions when they are in jobs where unions are available and there is freedom of choice on union membership.

This paper investigates nature of apathy in relation to unions, the causes of it and the influence it exerts on union membership. Union apathy was found to have quite different correlates to political apathy. Wheras political apathy is higher among blue collar workers, union apathy was lower...

Most treatments of the Great Depression have focused on its onset and its aftermath. In contrast, we take a unified view of the interwar period. We look at the slide into and the emergence from the 1920-21 recession and the roaring 1920s boom, as well as the slide into the Great Depression after...

We examine how a merger affects wages of unionized labour and, in turn, the profitability of a merger under Cournot competition in differentiated products. If unions are plant-specific, we find that a merger is more profitable than in a corresponding model with exogenous wages. In contrast to...

This paper examines whether the different macroeconomic performances of the German economy in two post-war decades provide evidence for the theory (first advanced by Mancur Olson) that sharp institutional breaks are conducive to economic growth because they destroy the existing network of...

This paper uses a new data source to investigate whether wages rise more with seniority in unionized or non-unionized workplaces. The data distinguish workers who are covered by incremental wage scales with automatic progression by seniority. For union workers with seniority scales, the union...

We analyse how the presence of trade unions affects the pattern of mergers in an international oligopoly and the welfare implications thereof. We find that an international merger results in lower wages for all firms. A national merger results in higher wages, highest for the non-merging firms....