strikes as a result of imperfect information this paper proposes a model of the bargaining process that recognizes that negotiators have only imperfect information at their command the author argues that the probability of a strike occurring will increase if one party bases its perception of the opponent s position on the same variables employed to form its own position when the opponent s position is in fact based on different variables strike probability is therefore assumed to be related to movements in variables of interest to only one side the model is tested on a sample of fourteen bargaining relationships drawn from the series wage chronology published by the bureau of labor statistics which details settlements between particular firms and unions over a period of about thirty years estimates of strike probability are derived from the maximum likelihood logit procedure the findings suggest that although both relative and absolute wage increases in a firm have a negative effect on strike frequency relative changes are more important

unions and strikes with asymmetric information strikes seem to be a pareto inefficient outcome of bargaining between a union and a firm however this paper shows that strikes can be the outcome of rational behavior by both agents if the firm has more information than the union concerning the state of nature the union can use strikes as a way of gaining information the paper uses an asymmetric information model where the firm has information about the state i e profitability that the union does not know the schedule of wage offers by the union then depends on the probability that a given state will occur

inequality and violent crime abstract we investigate the robustness and causality of the link between income inequality and violent crime across countries first we study the correlation between the gini index and homicide and robbery rates within and between countries second we examine the partial correlation by considering other crime determinants third we control for the endogeneity of inequality by isolating its exogenous impact on these crime rates fourth we control for measurement error in crime rates by modeling it as both unobserved country effects and random noise finally we examine the robustness of this partial correlation to alternative measures of inequality the panel data consist of nonoverlapping 5 year averages for 39 countries during 1965 95 for homicides and 37 countries during 1970 94 for robberies crime rates and inequality are positively correlated within countries and particularly between countries and this correlation reflects causation from inequality to crime rates even after controlling for ot

strike incidence in british manufacturing in the 1980s in british manufacturing during the 1980s about one in forty wage settlements involved a strike using data provided by the confederation of british industry the authors analyze the incidence of

conflict as a part of the bargaining process this paper investigates the use of conflict as a bargaining instrument it first revises the arguments explaining the role of confrontation as a source of information and its use during negotiations then it offers evidence illustrating this phenomenon by analyzing a sample of colonial and imperial wars the second part of the paper explores a bargaining model with one sided incomplete information parties can choose the scope of the confrontation they may want to engage in an absolute conflict that terminates the game or a limited conflict that only introduces delay and conveys information about the eventual outcome of the absolute one it is shown that confrontation has a double edged effect it may paradoxically open the door to agreement when the uninformed party is so optimistic that no agreement is feasible but it can also create inefficiency when agreement is possible but the informed agent has an incentive to improve her bargaining position by fighting

state dependence in the incidence of strikes evidence from canadian contract data using heckman s dynamic probit model abstract this paper considers whether there is state dependence in strike incidence using longitudinal contract data from canada i obtain my estimates using heckman s estimator for dynamic probit models and find that there is no state dependence in strike incidence

inequality and crime this paper considers the relationship between inequality and crime using data from urban counties the behavior of property and violent crime are quite different inequality has no effect on property crime but a strong and robust impact on violent crime with an elasticity above 0 5 by contrast poverty and police activity have significant effects on property crime but little on violent crime property crime is well explained by the economic theory of crime while violent crime is better explained by strain and social disorganization theories

learning by striking estimates of the teetotaler effect we hypothesize that past strike experience will have a negative or teetotaler effect on a collective bargaining unit s propensity to strike in future negotiations other things being equal we test this using a unique micro level sample comprising four consecutive negotiations by 147 bargaining units in u s manufacturing industries controlling for observable and unobservable differences among bargaining pairs in the propensity to strike our results are consistent with the view that the experience of striking is indeed sobering lagged strike experience variables have a significantly negative effect on the propensity to strike in the current negotiation

income inequality and violent crime evidence from mexico s drug war the relationship between income inequality and crime has attracted the interest of many researchers but little convincing evidence exists on the causal effect of inequality on crime in developing countries this paper estimates this effect in a unique context mexico s drug war the analysis takes advantage of a unique data set containing inequality and crime statistics for more than 2 000 mexican municipalities covering a period of 20 years using an instrumental variable for inequality that tackles problems of reverse causality and omitted variable bias this paper finds that an increment of one point in the gini coefficient translates into an increase of more than 10 drug related homicides per 100 000 inhabitants between 2006 and 2010 there are no significant effects before 2005 the fact that the effect was found during mexico s drug war and not before is likely because the cost of crime decreased with the proliferation of gangs facilitating access to knowledge and logistics lowering the marginal cost of criminal behavior which combined with rising inequality increased the expected net benefit from criminal acts after 2005

crime and growth convergence evidence from mexico scholars have often argued that crime deters growth but the empirical literature assessing such effect is scarce by exploiting cross municipality income and crime data for mexico a country that experienced a high increase in crime rates over the past decade this study circumvents two of the most common problems faced by researchers in this area these are i the lack of a homogenous consistently comparable measure of crime and ii the small sample problem in the estimation combining income data from poverty maps administrative records on crime and violence and public expenditures data at the municipal level for mexico 2005 2010 the analysis finds evidence indicating that drug related crimes indeed deter growth it also finds no evidence of a negative effect on growth from crimes unrelated to drug trafficking

more inequality more crime a panel cointegration analysis for the united states abstract this study employs state level panel data to examine the effect of income inequality on crime in the united states using panel cointegration techniques we find a significant negative effect of inequality on crime

historical limits on neoclassical strike theories evidence from french coal mining 1890 1935 this study analyzes the determinants of strikes in french coal mining over the period 1890 1935 the results indicate that factors emphasized by traditional bargaining power models were more important determinants of strikes in that setting than was economic variability this finding supports the hypothesis that neoclassical theories of strikes hicksian theories that strikes are a function of the parties lack of information about the economic environment in which bargaining takes place are inappropriate in some historical and political contexts specifically the authors argue that the many settings where as in the case considered strikes are politically motivated firms have simple economic structures and collective bargaining is poorly institutionalized should provide evidence discontinuing neoclassical predictions

estimating the narcotic effect of public sector impasse procedures this paper first describes in a relatively nontechnical fashion several econometric techniques that the authors believe should be useful to industrial relations researchers those techniques are then applied to an analysis of whether public sector impasse procedures create a narcotic effect that is a tendency for the bargaining parties once they use the procedures to become increasingly reliant on them in future negotiations the authors reanalyze data from thomas kochan and jean baderschneider s study of the impasse experience of police and firefighters under new york state s taylor law during the 1968 76 period and find that while a narcotic effect did exist as kochan and baderschneider argued that relationship lasted only during the early years of the period and was actually reversed in later years the authors conclude by explaining how such a pattern of results could occur tracing the implications of their findings for public policy and suggesting other research questions that could be anal

does income inequality lead to more crime a comparison of cross sectional and time series analyses of united states counties abstract this paper estimates the effect of income inequality on crime in united states counties using both cross sectional and first differenced approaches income inequality is positively associated with crime rates in the cross section analysis but negatively associated with crime rates in the time series analysis

third party intervention and the preservation of bargaining relationships this article uses longitudinal bargaining contract data to examine whether third party dispute resolution procedures improve the health of bargaining relationships and contribute to their preservat

what causes violent crime this study uses panel data of intentional homicide and robbery rates for a sample of developed and developing countries for the period 1970 1994 based on information from the united nations world crime surveys to analyze the determinants of national crime rates both across countries and over time a simple model of the incentives to commit crimes is proposed which explicitly considers possible causes of the persistence of crime over time criminal inertia a panel data based gmm methodology is used to estimate a dynamic model of national crime rates this estimator controls for unobserved country speci ce ects the joint endogeneity of some of the explanatory variables and the existence of some types of measurement errors a icting the crime data the results showthat increases in income inequality raise crime rates crime tends to be countercyclical and criminal inertia is signi cant 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

uncertainty and labor contract durations this paper provides an empirical investigation into the relationship between ex ante u s labor contract durations and uncertainty over the period 1970 to 1995 we construct measures of inflation uncertainty as well as aggregate nominal and real uncertainty the results not only corroborate previous findings of an inverse relationship between contract durations and inflation uncertainty but also document that this relationship extends to both measures of aggregate uncertainty we also explore the robustness of this relationship to various measures of inflation uncertainty that have appeared in the literature

strikes as collective voice a behavioral analysis of strike activity this paper outlines a collective voice approach for examining the behavioral determinants of variation in strike activity at the organizational level the author argues that strikes should be vie

inventories and strikes this paper analyses a dynamic model of bargaining and strikes in which the reservation wage of union members in each period is private information the model endogenizes the firm s decision to accumulate inventories of finished goods in order to enhance its bargaining position with higher inventories the firm makes a lower wage offer thereby accepting an increased probability of a strike the model can help explain empirical results that have found a positive correlation between wages and inventory accumulation it also shows that unless inventories are controlled for strike incidence will exhibit a spurious negative state dependence

uncovering and explaining variance in the features and outcomes of contingent work existing research tends to depict contingent work either as having similar implications for firms and workers in all settings or as varying in its implications depending only on contingent workers

do organizations have to change to learn examining the effects of technological change and learning from failures in the natural gas distribution industry failures contain valuable information however organizations vary at learning from them i ask whether failures prompt organizations to make technological investments and whether these investments help boost performance beyond improvements gained through direct organizational learning i test hypotheses on natural gas distributors to determine whether they enhance their performance by learning directly by recognizing failures as prompts to invest in safer technologies or through a combination results suggest that distributors learn directly though firms which also invest in related technologies are able to gain some additional benefits copyright 2010 the author 2010 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

the effect of labour relations legislation on strike incidence the impact on strike incidence of nine labour relations policy variables representing legislation in eleven canadian jurisdictions is estimated using logit analysis of 3 347 individual collective agreements mandatory strike votes compulsory dues check off and compulsory conciliation boards are associated with significantly lower strike probabilities prohibition of replacement workers and employer initiated strike votes are associated with significantly higher strike probabilities no significant association was found between strike incidence and the length of cooling off period following conciliation and negotiated or automatic reopeners policy impacts are interpreted in a framework emphasizing the influence of asymmetric inforrnation and joint costs on strikes

the determinants of strike incidence and severity a micro level study this paper investigates the determinants of strike incidence and severity during labor contract negotiations the author develops a model that considers the forces influencing both unions willingness to strike and employers willingness to take a strike and estimates it using data describing 1 050 negotiations in u s manufacturing during the 1971 80 period the results indicate that strike incidence is influenced by the gender composition of the labor force demand fluctuations in the product market location in a right to work state the number of workers in the bargaining unit union density in the industry and the extent to which wages kept pace with inflation over the prior contract period on the other hand neither the local unemployment rate when negotiations began nor the inflation rate over the term of the expiring contract influenced strike incidence or severity in this sample