We estimate the impact of nurse unions on health care quality using patient discharge data and the universe of hospital unionizations in California between 1996 and 2005. We find that hospitals with a successful union election outperform hospitals with a failed election in 12 of 13 nurse...

This paper provides a historical overview of the South African trade union movement, followed by a brief discussion of the labour market legislation and institutions formed since 1994. Thereafter, a detailed evaluation of the impact of trade unions, legislation, and institutions on labour market...

Trade unions are typically able to convert their industrial power into political power. We show that, depending on the parameter constellation, stronger trade unions may be welfare-improving in terms of an increase in aggregate employment and output, if they successfully lobby for lower trade...

Trade unions are typically able to convert their industrial power into political power. We show that, depending on the parameter constellation, stronger trade unions may be welfare-improving in terms of an increase in aggregate employment and output, if they successfully lobby for lower trade...

This paper presents an alternative implementation of firm-level collective wage bargaining, where bargaining proceeds as a finite sequence of sessions between a firm and a union of variable size. We investigate the impact of such a `gradual' union on the wage-employment contract in an economy...

Unions make differences to employee satisfaction that correspond to their effects on individual economic advantage. Panel data reveal how changes in economic circumstance and changes in job satisfaction are linked to changes in union coverage. When individuals move into a union covered job they...

This paper looks at the financial resources of trades unions in the UK, both updating previous work and attempting to understand the management of first and second order collective action problems. First order problems refer to the problems of initiating collective action and second order...

Workfare proposals concentrate on the work incentives for welfare recipients, thus focusing on the labor supply side. This paper analyzes the effects workfare has on labor demand when the labor market is unionized. As workfare reduces the number of recipients of public financial assistance, a...

This paper discusses the sensitivity of the labor market outcome in the standard bargaining paradigms - monopoly union and efficient bargaining - to the existence of a budget constraint pending on the financing of the unemployment benefit. Consequences of how the unions value members and...

According to the existing literature, capital taxes should not be imposed in the presence of optimal profit taxation in either unionised or competitive labour markets. We show that this conclusion does not hold for an economy with both competitive and unionised sectors, where the competitive...