Using Canadian data on large, private-sector contract negotiations from January 1967 to March 1993, we find that wages and strikes are substantially influenced by labor policy. In particular, we find that prohibiting the use of replacement workers during strikes is associated with significantly...

We study strike durations and outcomes for some 2000 disputes that occurred between 1881 and 1886. Most post-strike bargaining settlements in the 1880s fell into one of two categories: either a union "victory", characterized by a significant wage gain or hours cut, or a union "defeat",...

This paper describes a simple model of labor disputes based on the hypothesis that unions use strikes to infer the level of profitability of the firm. The implications of the model are then tested using data on wage outcomes, strike probabilities, and strike durations for a large sample of...

Implementation of workplace policies--whether through enforcement of laws or administration of programs--raises the question of the interaction between institutions created to carry out laws and the activities of workplace based agents that directly (e.g. unions) or indirectly (e.g. insurance...

This paper provides a case study of the effect of labor relations on product quality. We consider whether a long, contentious strike and the hiring of permanent replacement workers by Bridgestone/Firestone in the mid-1990s contributed to the production of an excess number of defective tires....

Labor Market Intermediaries (LMIs) are entities or institutions that interpose themselves between workers and firms to facilitate, inform, or regulate how workers are matched to firms, how work is accomplished, and how conflicts are resolved. This paper offers a conceptual foundation for...

How costly is inflation to workers? Answers to this question have focused on the path of real wages during inflationary periods. We argue that workers must take costly actions ("conflict") to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not...

Just and efficient allocations of charity have attracted much academic and media attention. The sources of inefficiency and unjust are important to understand yet understudied. Our study aims to fill this void by directly modelling the victims' market in a collective reputation framework. By...

Macroeconomic dynamics are shaped by how individual incentives to spend and accumulate interact with the decisions of others. The goal of this paper is to identify--within a simple large-game-theoretic structure--which types of agent interactions favor which types of dynamic equilibrium...