Labor unions' greatest potential for political influence likely arises from their direct connection to millions of individuals at the workplace. There, they may change the ideological positions of both unionizing workers and their non-unionizing management. In this paper, we analyze the...

In this paper we investigate trade union formation. To this end we apply a model with two types of labour where the interests of both groups of labourers are represented by either a joint (industry) labour union or by two independent group-specific (professional) labour unions. We investigate...

OPTIMThe conservative central banker has come under attack recently. Explicitly modeling the interaction of a trade union with monetary policy, it has been argued that the standard solution to the inflationary bias in monetary policy might actually be welfare reducing if the trade union has an...

A trade union whose purpose is to raise wages above the competitive level may foster economic growth if it succeeds in shifting income away from the owners of capital to the workers and if the workers' marginal propensity to save exceeds the one of capitalists. We make this point in an...

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...

We show the effects of the bargaining power of labour unions on product innovation under decentralised and centralised wage bargaining. In this context, we show the implications of preference function, which affects the market size. A higher union bargaining power increases innovation if...

Using data on 17 OECD countries for 1960-98, this paper studies the impact of unions on public employment incidence, using macrodata and microdata. Macrodata show that greater coverage by centralized collective bargaining institutions raises the public employment share, controlling for country...

Using the 2019 ECS, we investigate the relationship between union organization, workplace representation, industrial relations quality and strike incidence. We also consider some six issues behind the most recent instances of industrial action or threatened industrial action and their outcomes....

Strikes, just as other types of conflict, used to be difficult to explain from an economic perspective. Initially, it was thought that they were a result of mistakes or irrationality. Then, during the 1980s an explosion of research brought asymmetric information to prominence as a significant...

This paper extends the Diamond (1980) model with labor unions to study optimal income taxation and to analyze whether unions can be desirable for income redistribution. Unions bargain with firms over wages in each sector and firms unilaterally determine employment. Unions raise the efficiency...