What type of businesses do unions target for organizing? A dynamic model of the union organizing process is constructed to answer this question. A union monitors establishments in an industry to learn about their productivity and decides which ones to organize and when. An establishment becomes...

In this article, I argue that a more useful and general theory about the fate of American cities in the last half of the 20th century must begin with a discussion of the treatment of capital and the security of property rights within their borders. In particular, I will focus on the powerful...

What type of businesses attract unions? A theory of union learning and organizing is developed to provide an answer to this question. A union monitors establishments in an industry to learn about their productivity and decides which ones to organize. An establishment becomes unionized if the...

This paper uses state fixed effect models and a Synthetic Control design with Current Population Survey (CPS) data to identify the impact of state Right-to-Work (RTW) laws on wages, benefits, and union status among private and public sector workers. Despite a modest effect of RTW laws on wages,...

This paper draws on a telephone survey of 1000 workers to explore whether alternative, nonunion forms of representation appear to be filling the gap left by union decline, whether this matters to authority relations at work, and whether it may, indeed, help to explain union decline. It finds...

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...

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...

Union membership in the United States displayed a ∩-shaped pattern over the 20th century, while income inequality sketched a ∪. A model of unions is developed to analyze these facts. There is a distribution of productivity across firms in the economy. Firms hire capital, plus skilled and...

Organized labor has been politically vocal in the United States ever since the movement emerged in the late 1800s. A striking development since the 1970s, however, is its hardening opposition to trade liberalization. Labor leaders have opposed virtually all legislative initiatives since the...

What type of businesses do unions target for organizing? A dynamic model of the union organizing process is constructed to answer this question. A union monitors establishments in an industry to learn about their productivity and decides which ones to organize and when. An establishment becomes...