This paper analyzes the effects of trade and labor market liberalization on wages and worker productivity/effort in a domestic unionized firm with firm-union bargaining over wages and effort. It is shown that both types of liberalization will induce a cold shower effect(a rise in effort) if the...

During the 1930s and 1940s, collective bargaining emerged as the workplace governance norm in much of the U.S. industrial sector. Following its peak in the 1950s, union density in the U.S. private sector fell steadily, to only 7.4 percent in 2006. Governance shifted from a formalized union norm...

The paper uses a bilateral trade gravity model to evaluate the effects of freedom of association and collective bargaining (FACB) rights and democracy on exports, evaluating exports by labour intensity (using several classifications of industries by labour-intensity) for the 1993 to 1999 period....

Union membership, as a percentage of the private sector workforce, has been in decline for 50 years. I argue that the cause of this unrelenting decline is due to a single fundamental factor - the change in the United States economy from a corporatist-regulated economy to one based on free...