Job-satisfaction as a component of workers' utility has been strangely neglected, with work usually regarded as reducing utility and the benefits of leisure. This is contradicted by many empirical studies showing that unemployment is a major cause of unhappiness, even when income is controlled...

We examine the changing relationship between unionization and wage inequality in Canada and the United States. Our study is motivated by profound recent changes in the composition of the unionized workforce. Historically, union jobs were concentrated among low-skilled men in private sector...

Do employees fare better in firms they partly own? Examining workers' reviews of their employers on Glassdoor, we compare employee satisfaction between firms in which workers own company shares through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and conventional firms in which they do not. Focusing...

In many kinds of bilateral negotiations the resolution of the issues at stake has an impact which extends beyond the remits of the parties directly involved (e.g. labour negotiations in sectors of public interest, where a strike would impact on the public at large). Once this is recognised,...

We explore the long run determinants of current differences in the degree of cooperative labor relations at local level. We do this by estimating the causal effect of the medieval communes - that were established in certain cities in Centre-Northern Italy towards the end of the 11th century -...

We investigate how the incompleteness of an employment contract - discretionary and non-contractible effort - can affect an employer's decision about cutting nominal wages. Using matched employer-employee payroll data from Great Britain, linked to a survey of managers, we find support for the...

We study how different payment modes influence the effectiveness of gift exchange as a contract enforcement device. In particular, we analyze how horizontal fairness concerns affect performance and efficiency in an environment characterized by contractual incompleteness. In our experiment, one...

Using cross-country data from the European Company Survey, we investigate the relationship between workplace employee representation and five behavioral outcomes: strike incidence, the climate of industrial relations, sickness/absenteeism, employee motivation, and staff retention. The evidence...

We present a simple framework for analyzing decline in union voice in the Anglo-American world and its replacement by non-union, often direct, forms of worker voice. We argue that it is a decline in the in-flow to unionisation among employers and workers, rather than an increase in the outflow...

This paper investigates the demise of unionisation in British private sector workplaces over the last quarter century. We show that dramatic union decline has occurred across all types of workplace. Although the union wage premium persists it is quite small in 2004. Negative union effects on...