The fraction of works councillors belonging to a trade union in Germany is much higher than union density among employees. If works councils represent the face of unions, union membership of employees should be related positively to the existence of works councils and their proximity to unions....

Status considerations with respect to consumption give rise to negative externalities because individuals do not take into account that their decisions affect the relative consumption position of others. Further, status concerns create incentives for excessive labour supply in competitive...

In an open-shop model of trade union membership with heterogeneity in risk attitudes, a worker's relative risk aversion can affect the decision to join a trade union. Furthermore, a shift in risk attitudes can alter collective bargaining outcomes. Using German panel data (GSOEP) and three novel...

We study how union certification affects the enforcement of workplace-safety laws. To generate credible causal estimates, a regression discontinuity design compares outcomes in establishments where unions barely won representation elections to outcomes in establishments where union barely lost...

In a unionised labour market, a substitution of a payroll for an income tax will not alter employment if tax obligations are fulfilled. However, if workers or firms can evade taxes this irrelevance result might no longer apply. This will especially be the case if the fine for tax evasion depends...

An interesting aspect of British research on unions based on the Workplace Industrial/Employment Relations Surveys has been the apparent shift in union impact on establishment performance in the decade of the 1990s compared with the 1980s - and the recent scramble to explain the phenomenon. In...

This paper estimates the effect of labor-market concentration on labor compensation across the U.S. private sector since 2000. We distinguish between concentration in local labor markets versus local product markets, guarding against bias from confounded product-market concentration. Analysis...

A large number of articles have analysed 'the one constant' in the economic effects of trade unions, namely that collective bargaining reduces employment growth by two to four percentage points per year. Evidence is, however, mostly related to Anglo-Saxon countries. We investigate whether a...

This paper develops the first evidence on how individuals' union membership status affects their net fiscal impact, the difference between taxes they pay and cost of public benefits they receive, enriching our understanding of how labor relations interacts with public economics. Current...