We extend the standard quality-ladder model with heterogeneous workers by including efficiency wages and unions. We find that higher union bargaining power leads to a negative relationship between growth and unemployment. An increase in the supply of human capital, however, on the one hand...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members in parliament. Unions have not been successful in increasing their monopoly power during the last decades in the US. Similarly, a recent study for Germany comes to the result that union members in the "Bundestag" cannot be seen as the...

This article focuses on the role of unionized members of the parliament. Referring to the famous study by Freeman and Medoff (1984) and considering the more recent literature we first review unions' political power at the example of the US. We conclude that trade unions have not been very...

The answer to the question in the title of course depends on how we define economic performance. In an overlapping generations model we show that trade unions do worsen economic performance in the sense that we get uemployment, but it is quite likely that trade unions give rise to a higher...

Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in China's Guangdong and Zhejiang Provinces, the author asks how post-socialist unions respond to worker unrest and why the development of sectoral-level bargaining has been uneven in different regions of China. While Zhejiang has had relative success in...

In the present paper it will be shown that trade unions have a positive impact on economic growth. This finding is in agreement with the works of (Tapio Palokangas, 1996; 2000; 2004; 2005); (Grieben and Şener, 2008) and it refers to the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France,...