the demand for post compulsory education in the uk and the effects of educational maintenance allowances in this paper the author develops a model of investment in postcompulsory schoolin g based on human capital theory the model is estimated using data on a sample of sixteen and seventeen year olds derived from the family expenditure survey the results reveal significant differences in the factors influencing enrollment in postcompulsory education between m ales and females mot notably household income is an important deter minant of educational participation for females but not for their ma le counterparts on the basis of these results the author assesses t he effects of the introduction of educational maintenance allowances on participation rates in the united kingdom

the labour market participation of northern ireland university students this paper seeks to examine what factors are associated with student labour force participation in northern ireland in both term time and vacation making use of quarterly labour force survey data for the period march 1998 february 1999 the results suggest female students are more likely to work than male students mature students are less likely to work than non mature students roman catholic students are less likely to work than non roman catholic students students living at home are more likely to work than student living away from home and an increase in the actual or predicted wage increases the probability of labour force participation the author suggests that some of these results are due to the particular nature of the northern ireland socio economic situation while others are likely to be true for the rest of the united kingdom

strikes and holdouts in wage bargaining theory and data we develop a private information model of union contract negotiations in which disputes signal a firm s willingness to pay previous models have assumed that all labor disputes take the form of a strike yet a prominent feature of u s collective bargaining is the holdout negotiations often continue without a strike after the contract has expired production continues with workers paid according to the expired contract we analyze the union s decision to strike or hold out and highlight its importance to strike activity strikes are more likely to occur after a drop in the real wage or a decline in unemployment

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

staying on in full time education the educational participation rate of 16 year olds this paper presents a time series analysis of the socioeconomic factors influencing the propensity of sixteen year olds to stay on in full time education in england and wales the econometric methodology employed relies on cointegration and general to specific techniques the results suggest that the main factors influencing staying on are the rate of return to education changing social class structure unemployment rates and the introduction of special employment and training measures such as the youth training scheme copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

unemployment and early school leaving theoretical predictions about the effect of unemployment on school leaving are ambiguous unemployment might affect the decision to leave school in a number of different ways i current youth unemployment a higher probability of current unemployment for those who choose to leave school would tend to discourage early school leaving first by reducing the expected gains from job search a discouraged worker effect and second by reducing the opportunity cost of additional education ii expected future unemployment the theoretical predictions here are less clear cut an increase in the probability of future unemployment that affected both those with and without additional education would tend to reduce the rate of return to education and hence education demand on the other hand those with more education may be less affected by rises in unemployment and this may encourage further schooling these two opposing effects have been formalised as a shift and a tilt in the unemployment probability schooling relationship kodde i988 fig i suggests that in the united kingdom both effects could have accompanied the transition from the late 1970s to the i98o the full effects of uncertainty on education investment in a two period model depend on the correlation between the uncertainty in the two periods levhari and weiss 1974 how current unemployment rates are used to form expectations of future unemployment is clearly an important issue here also some individuals may be able to undertake job search before committing themselves to leave school and whilst affected by the risk of future unemployment may be comparatively unaffected by the risk of current unemployment iii effects ofparental unemployment parents unemployment in general reduces family income their children s educational demand may fall as a consequence for three reasons first the consumption demand for education will be lower second a reduction in the first period income reduces the investment demand for education assuming decreasing absolute risk aversion kodde i 988

cyclical fluctuations in strike activity using a set of data on contracts and strikes for the period 1970 81 the author distinguishes among the roles of aggregate business conditions labor market conditions and product market conditions in the determination of strike incidence and duration strike incidence is found to be highest in industries that are depressed relative to the rest of the economy but in regions with low unemployment this finding is consistent with the theory that the cost of a strike to a firm increases with the demand for its product and the cost of a strike to the union increases with unemployment another finding however is that strikes are longest in industries that are booming relative to the rest of the economy

employment policies wage formation and trade union behavior in a small open economy a model of trade union determined wages is developed which provides an explanation of underemployment based on optimizing behavior it is shown that fiscal policy will in general affect employment under perfect foresight and immediate wage flexibility future consequences of short run stabilization policies are discussed ratchet effects with respect to government expenditure and game theoretic interdependence between government and trade union behavior are emphasized if the trade union takes short run policy measures in order to increase employment as an indication of an employment stabilization rule the future behavior of the trade union changes and the result may be a decrease in long run employment

miners wages in post war britain an application of a model of trade union behavior the paper studies the determination of wages in the british coal industry a utility maximising model of a trade union is used to represent the behaviour of the national union of mineworkers a non linear structural model is derived and is estimated by full information maximum likelihood the results are quite encouraging there is support for a neo classical demand curve for miners labour and a significant estimate of workers relative risk aversion

bargaining and strikes strikes are generally regarded as an important economic phenomenon and yet good theoretical explanations of them are hard to come by the difficulty is to understand why rational parties should resort to a wasteful mechanism as a way of distributing the gains from trade why could not both parties be made better off by moving to the final distribution of surplus immediately or if it is uncertain to its certainty equivalent and sharing the benefits from increased production

the tradeoff between wages and employment in trade union objectives this paper demonstrates that contrary to a widely held opinion the determination of the goals of unions is fully amenable to empirical analysis a characterization of the wage and employment setting process in unionized markets is adopted and its qualitative implications examined the first order condition for this model is fitted to time series data on the newspaper industry from ten cities the international typographical union s objective function reveals very restricted opportunities for substituting wages for employment in response to a change in the slope of the employer s labor demand function larger union locals place greater emphasis on wages versus employment than smaller union locals

wages and employment under trade unionism microeconomic models and macroeconomic applications the first part of this paper is a critical survey of microeconomic research into behavioural models of trade unionism although certain formulations of union objectives and models of wage and employment determination in unionized markets have found favor with economists unfortunately only a little is known about their empirical relevance the second part of this paper deals with the daunting problems of applying these models at the macroeconomic level one such model is estimated with data from sweden s mining and manufacturing sector from 1968 to 1982

are workers paid their marginal products status is like coase s social costs a reciprocal phenomenon given that one person s gain in status can occur only at the expense of a loss in status for others and that workers are free to choose their coworkers it follows that the competitive wage structure within a firm must be one in which individual wage differences understate individual differences in marginal products the purpose of this paper is to examine a variety of empirical evidence that relates to this proposition about the firm s internal wage structure the paper is organized as follows section i briefly summarizes the theoretical considerations that govern competitive wage determination when status matters to people and firms are viewed as voluntary associations of workers section ii then confronts the predictions of section i by examining pay and productivity schedules for a group of sales occupations for which these schedules are relatively easily observed section ii also examines the relationship between wages and productivity for a sample of university professors an occupation in which individual productivity differences are for a variety of obvious reasons relatively more difficult to measure all of the evidence examined is consistent with the hypothesis that within firms wage rates vary substantially less than do individual productivity values section iii discusses additional observations and evidence that bear on this same hypothesis it suggests that the implicit market for status may strongly influence the ways in which firms are organized to carry out the tasks they perform section iv concludes by considering the claim that egalitarian internal wage structures arise because of equity considerations it argues that the concept of equity appears very closely linked to the concept of status and suggests a strategy for assigning monetaty value to the equity considerations that so often dominate public policy decisions

union contracts and money wage changes in u s manufacturing industries this paper analyzes the relationship between wage changes negotiated in selected large collective bargaining agreements and industry wide changes in average hourly earnings multiple regressions are used to examine the relationship in two digit manufacturing industries for the period 1958ii to 1978il negotiated wage changes are found to have a major impact on overall movements in hourly earnings the estimated equations have potential applications for short run wage forecasting and for policy analyses

strikes wages and private information private information models of strikes suggest that the strike is used as an information revealing device by the union in the presence of asymmetrical information a testable prediction of these models is that there is a negative relationship between strikes and the unpredicted component of the wage this paper finds evidence of such a relationship in a large sample of u s labor contracts the real wage falls by about 3 percent after a strike lasting one hundred days copyright 1989 by american economic association

poverty food security nexus evidence from a survey of urban slum dwellers in kolkata we explore the poverty food security nexus using an experience based indicator of food security constructed using a cross section sample of slum households in kolkata within the framework of a simultaneous ordered probit model we find a poor household is also likely to be food insecure additionally education gender and household composition are major drivers of food insecurity among low income urban households with the policy implication that anti poverty policies should be successful in eliminating household food insecurity however they need to be complemented with human capital investment and gender empowerment to be most effective

modelling the transition from school and the demand for training in the united kingdom this paper analyses the choices made by school leavers and the demand for training in the youth labour market using a large cross section database on all school leavers in lancashire in 1991 we model using a multinomial logit their first destination six months after the end of compulsory schooling we model six choices outcomes non vocational continuing education vocational continuing education youth training employment with on the job training employment with general skills training and unemployment our results show that the first destination from school is affected by a range of individual school and local labour market variables in addition to academic ability we report three effects that are not well known a young person is more likely to leave school the bigger the school the lower its academic performance and the lower his or her expected lifetime earnings our results might be interpreted as evidence of a segmented youth labour market it is also inappropriate to model the decision to stay on in continuing education as a simple binary choice

the determinants of workers union status evidence from the national longitudinal surveys using data from the 1980 wave of the young men nls sample this paper provides estimates of the queue model developed by farber to explain the process of union status determination the use of nls data largely avoids the censoring problem encountered by farber in estimating his model and permits direct estimation of crucial probabilities associated with the model despite important differences between econometric methodologies and the data sets analyzed the nls results support farber s conclusion that queueing for vacancies in existing union jobs is an important labor market phenomenon in particular supply constraints on the availability of union jobs are found to dominate worker preferences in explaining differences in extent of unionization by occupation and region but not race

information incentives and contract timing patterns a prominent feature of wage contracting in the united states is the bunched timing pattern that is often associated with the process of pattern bargaining the model describes the bunching of wage contracts as the equilibrium outcome of decentralized decisions in an economy composed of both competitive and monopolistically competitive product markets agents time their wage adjustment to take advantage of the information associated with the timing decisions of others this information based motive leads to staggered contracting a bunching equilibrium requires the presence of heterogeneous product markets and occurs because the information transmitted by contracting agents differs across the market structures copyright 1990 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the direction of wage spillovers in manufacturing this study develops a model of wage behavior for both union and nonunion workers in the u s manufacturing sector and tests that model with separate union and nonunion wage change series covering the period 1960 to 1978 the empirical results support the traditional view that union wage behavior influences or spills over into nonunion wage changes but not vice versa these results are of particular interest because they contrast sharply with an earlier study by flanagan that reported an opposite spillover effect flanagan s results are shown to be quite sensitive to the choice of model specification and data period

the effectiveness of yts as a manpower policy using data from the 1985 and 1986 scottish people s surveys this paper attempts to measure the effectiveness of the youth training scheme by estimating the impact of youth training scheme participation on both the subsequent probability of employment and the subsequent earnings potential the youth training scheme is found to have a positive impact on the probability of employment after allowing for possible sample selection bias owing to participation being nonrandom there are indications that the youth training scheme may have a positive impact on subsequent wages but the estimates are so imprecise that it was not possible to draw any statistically significant conclusions about wage effects copyright 1990 by the london school of economics and political science

logit estimates of strike incidence from canadian contract data logit estimates of strike incidence are made based on a unique and comprehensive data set of 2 437 collective agreements the appropriate level of aggregation since that is where bargaining occurs the results are interpreted through a theoretical framework emphasizing that strikes are more likely when the joint costs of using the strike mechanism are low relative to the cost of alternative mechanisms for achieving the same purposes such functions of strikes are to generate information elicit truth telling establish reputations provide catharsis and solve intraorganizational conflict

strategic delay in bargaining with two sided uncertainty the role of strategic delay is analyzed in an infinite horizon alternating offer model of bargaining a buyer and seller are engaged in the trade of a single object both bargainers have private information about their own preferences and are impatient in that delaying agreement is costly an equilibrium is constructed in which the bargainers signal the strength of their bargaining positions by delaying prior to making an offer a bargainer expecting large gains from trade is more impatient than one expecting small gains and hence makes concessions earlier on trade occurs whever gains from trade exist but due to the private information only after costly delay panmunjom korea upi the american general and the north korean general glared at each other across the table and the only sound was the wind howling across the barren hills outside their hut maj gen james b knapp negotiator for the united nations command unc was waiting for maj gen ri choonsun of the democratic people s republic of north korea to propose a recess they sat there arms folded for 42 hours not a word finally gen ri got up walked out and drove away evening bulletin philadelphia 11 april 1969

a theory of holdouts in wage bargaining holdouts the continuation of negotiations beyond the contract expiry date are the most common form of disputes in labor contract negotiations the authors model holdouts as a delaying tactic employed by unions to obtain information about other bargaining outcomes in their industry novel implications of their model include a positive association between holdout duration and the number of bargaining pairs negotiating contracts simultaneously bunching of holdout durations within these negotiating groups and fewer strikes among holdouts which end later in groups using a large panel of contract negotiations in canadian manufacturing the authors find considerable support for these predictions copyright 1998 by american economic association

union membership in the united states 1973 1981 this paper reports estimates of union membership gathered from may current population surveys from 1973 to 1981 the authors present data by occupation industry selected states and smsas race gender and educational attainment the paper both extends and differs from that by freeman and medoff which presents unionism estimates for the private sector for 1968 75 to facilitate longitudinal analysis this paper reports three year moving averages of occupational and industry data and annual estimates of demographic classifications the data include public sector as well as private sector workers and they exclude workers not covered by the national labor relations act also the authors provide only union membership estimates not estimates on workers covered by union contracts this paper suggests that the percentage of all workers that are unionized in the united states remained fairly constant over the 1973 81 period

inflation and financial deepening comment abstract in a recent paper moore 1986 has criticized mckinnon s 1976 analysis of the relationship between a country s savings propensities and its money income ratio on both logical and empirical grounds and has proposed an alternative treatment we argue here that moore s critique and proposed alternative while containing useful insights are theoretically and empirically problematic and we propose a synthesis of mckinnon s and moore s treatments we also develop a simple growth model based upon our synthesis which is shown to generate certain significant implications for the neo structuralist critique of the mckinnon shaw financial liberalization prescription

characterizing spanish labour pathways of young people with vocational lower secondary education school to work transition is no longer considered to take place at one point but it is seen as a sequential process with multiple stages that extend over a relatively long period in which individuals gradually settle down into the labour market this article constructs and examines the labour pathways followed by spanish young people who have completed vocational lower secondary education to do so we use the survey on educational training transition and labour integration a retrospective longitudinal dataset that contains monthly calendar information about the labour states in the 4 years after completing vocational education a wide range of states is covered part time employment full time employment unemployment and several situations of inactivity to examine young labour pathways we use sequence analysis an exploratory technique which allows us to obtain a measure of dissimilarity between sequences later a cluster analysis is applied that allow us to identify seven patterns of transition into

cyclical fluctuations in strike durations canadian data on strikes between 1946 and 1983 are used to estimate linear regression models for the logarithm of completed duration a thorough investigation of the influence of the business cycle reveals strong support for the hypothesis that strike durations are countercyclical the cyclical effect is shown to be robust to both the choice of cyclical variable and the econometric specification and the magnitude of the effect is quite substantial experimentation with different representations of the cycle reveals that it is difficult to improve on a simple formulation involving a single continuous variable

worker substitutability and patterns of unionisation a strategic three party bargaining model is developed in which one distinguished party the firm has to reac h agreements with the other two each of which is a group of workers in the prebargaining stage the two worker groups decide whether to organize jointly or separately the main observation relates the equi librium pattern of unionization to the substitutability in production between the two groups the outcome is joint or separate unions acco rding to whether the two groups are substitute or complementary facto rs of production the analysis also considers possibilities for firm s strategic intervention in the unionization process copyright 1988 by royal economic society

unorganized money markets and unproductive assets in the new structuralist critique of financial liberalization abstract the new structuralists critique of financial liberalization emphasizes the role of informal credit markets in financing firms residual credit demand in ldcs and the relevance of households portfolio substitution patterns the sensitivity of their policy conclusions is demonstrated in the context of a representative model developed by van wijnbergen the relative efficiency of intermediation in the formal and informal credit markets crucially affects the outcome of the portfolio allocation effects generated by higher bank deposit rates an anomaly in the characterization of unproductive assets in defining credit supply is also examined

interest rate management in ldc s the mckinnon argument that higher time deposit rates raise output and lower inflation in the short run and increase medium term growth by raising the savings rate are shown to depend crucially on the assumption that portfolio shifts into td s come out of an asset providing less intermediation than the banking system we show that if instead the shift is out of an asset providing more intermediation e g loans on a curbmarket raising td rates is contractionary in the short run may have negative impacts on growth and can lead to more rather than less inflation in the short run

bank runs the deposit currency ratio and the interest rate abstract this paper provides a model of an economy with a banking system which is subject to bank runs the model is then used to explain the rise in short term interest rates during bank runs and the fall in the deposit currency ratio in anticipation of possible runs

union wage differentials in the public and private sectors a simultaneous equations specification the paper attempts to integrate new approaches to estimating union wage effects with the analysis of public private sector wage differentials estimates of the union differential in both public and private sectors allowing for the endogeneity of union status are presented the hypothesis that the recently measured rents to public sector employment primarily reflect the recent increase in unionization in that sector is examined and receives considerable empirical support there was evidence of positive selection into the union sector especially for private sector workers union status appears to be strongly influenced by the expected wage gain from joining the union sector

formal and informal financial markets and the neo structuralist critique of the financial liberalization strategy in less developed countries abstract the neo structuralist critique of the mckinnon shaw financial liberalization prescription rests fundamentally on the consideration that formal financial intermediaries have significantly higher reserve ratios than informal ones however the economic functions served by these reserves in terms of liquidity enhancement and seignorage creation are ignored incorporation of the latter function into the analysis leads to the complete neutralisation of the neo structuralist critique and incorporation of the former function produces the result that a financial liberalization is unambiguously welfare increasing our optimizing framework also points up an important deficiency in neo structuralist modelling of substitutions by asset holders between formal and informal sector financial instruments

non cooperative bargaining and union formation we study a union formation decision problem when workers consist of two groups distinguished by different productivities workers may form either a joint union or two separate unions the whole decision process is modelled as an extensive form bargaining game workers form a joint union when the sizes or productivities of the groups are similar in the first case there is a wage differential which is more less than proportional to the productivity difference if the size of the more productive is smaller larger than that of the less productive in the second case there is no wage differential in this paper we study a union formation decision problem when workers consist of two groups distinguished by different productivities they may form either a joint union or two separate unions depending on the relative size and productivity of the two groups the whole decision process is modelled as an extensive form bargaining game in which the two groups of workers bargain with each other as well as with a firm the labour market is sharply distinguished from the goods market by the widespread practice of collective bargaining usually several groups of workers with different characteristics for example skill level or geographical location are represented as a single unit and or several employers form a single bargaining unit against a giant union this multiplicity of bargaining units creates a complicated bargaining structure and makes the outcome hard to analyse the purpose of this paper is to provide a model which captures this complexity and at the same time clarifies the underlying structure of bargaining power although economists have been aware of the multiplicity problem for a long time it has been received little rigorous theoretical treatment until recently davidson 1985 examined the possible gains that can be obtained by trade unions through joint bargaining in an oligopolistic industry there is a positive externality due to the fact that a higher wage rate in one firm generates a larger demand hence a higher wage in competing firms when a joint union is organized these externalities are internalized to the benefit of workers horn and wolinsky 1985 investigated the equilibrium pattern of unionization in an industry where a firm employs two types of workers they found that workers tend to form a single union when the two types are substitutes in the sense that the incremental contribution of one group to the firm s revenue is decreasing with respect to the size of the other group since workers bargaining power comes from the loss that they can

financial repression the new structuralists and stabilization policy in semi industrialized economies abstract this paper examines the short and long run effects of a variety of macroeconomic policies in a simple model where the curb market plays a pivotal role as the marginal supplier of loanable funds it is found that financial liberalization may fail in the short run and contrary to the claims of the new structuralists that the financial market repercussions of devaluation may be favorable in evaluating any policy the time horizon is critical short and long run multipliers may differ in sign in all cases save that of a contraction in the stock of bank credit

labor union objectives and collective bargaining we consider a model oflabor union behavior in which workers make decisions about wages and employment by simple majority rule we show that under general conditions such a union has a well behaved objective function different from those previously postulated in the literature we then show that the union s majority preferences generally lack a von neumann morgenstern utility representation and thus cannot be inserted into traditional bargaining models we then develop and characterize the solutions to a new bargaining model that is consistent with the structure of union preferences several comparative statics results are presented

choosing the wrong pond social comparisons in negotiations that reflect a self serving bias we explore the role that choice of comparison groups plays in explaining impasse in teacher contract negotiations we hypothesize that the negotiators select comparable districts in a biased fashion such that teachers salaries in districts that unions view as comparable are higher than teachers salaries in districts that school boards view as comparable we also predict that strike activity is positively related to the difference in the salary levels of the unions and boards lists of comparables we test these predictions using a unique combination of subjective survey and field data on teacher contract negotiations in pennsylvania both hypotheses are supported by the data

union power and the american labour movement there is by now ample empirical support for the claim that unions do affect labour contracts 1 these results indicate that unions do indeed have some bargaining power in order to develop public policies towards unions it becomes important therefore to understand the ways in which their bargaining power operates several theoretical speculations have related bargaining power to both product and labour market structures 2 yet there has been very little empirical corroboration of the arguments developed 3 a major impediment to empirical testing has been the lack of quantitative information on the industrial relations network in recent years however the us bureau of labour statistics has collected large bodies of data on collective bargaining contracts in this paper one of these data sets is used 4 to generate quantitative measures of the determinants of union power the paper is organized as follows in the first section the major theoretical arguments concerning the determinants of union po

value added in further education and vocational training in northern ireland at the age of 16 many young people in the uk decide to leave school and enter vocational education or training either at a further education fe college or on a government training scheme in spite of the size and importance of this group the current debate about education and training standards has tended to focus more on how to improve schools largely neglecting the potential contribution to be made by the fe and vocational training sectors this study seeks to begin to redress this imbalance by examining the extent to which those young people leaving school and entering vocational education or training at 16 obtained further qualifications up to the age of 18 in particular there is an examination of whether the choice between fe and government training schemes at age 16 influences the subsequent success of young people in terms of gaining additional qualifications adopting an ordered probit approach to modelling qualifications levels the results contradict the somewhat pessimistic common pe

payroll taxes and wage inflation the swedish experiences payroll taxes levied on employers have become an increasingly important part of the swedish tax system these taxes including various collective fees agreed on in central wage negotiations amounted to about 6 of the wage bill of private business in 1950 but had reached 40 in the late 1970s payroll tax increases have been quite dramatic during the last decade with tax rates climbing from 14 to 40 attempts to estimate the extent to which payroll tax increases have been directly shifted back onto labor as lower wages are reported in this paper the basic message of the empirical analysis is that payroll tax increases have produced some backward shifting on wages although the shifting appears to be far from complete a onepercent statutory wage cost increase is associated with an actual wage cost increase of about one half of a percent

liquidity banking and bank failures a multiperiod model with risk neutral agents is constructed in which a liquidity problem arises in an equilibrium with decentralized tradin g in capital which banking institutions are able to alleviate depos it contracts provide for early withdrawal banks hold debt and agent s who borrow from banks hold compensating balances institutional col lapse or a state of the world when bank failures are experienced is associated with a high demand for liquidity low output and a lower than average level of welfare bank failure is symptomatic of a part icular state of endowments preferences and technology and governme nt intervention is undesirable copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the liquidity services of money this paper investigates the liquidity services provided by cash interest bearing check balances and securities which pay higher interest than checks securities must be traded before con sumers know their desired level or composition of consumption cash a nd checks are more liquid since they are available on demand cas h is more liquid than checks since it is more widely useable as a medium of exchange cash will often be used to buy goods which could be bought by check and the demand for cash will be less sensitive t han the demand for checks to the interest paid on check balances copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

a new econometric model of union threat effects the union threat effect is the propensity of non union employers to resist union organization by raising wages this study introduces an empirical model of the non union employer s optimal wage in the presence of threat effects estimates of an equation of a firm s unionization probability provide key variables unlike previous models this specification dervies directly from a theoritical model separstes threat effects from the influence of other union non union spillovers and efficiency wages and includes many factors affecting the probability of unionization wage equation estimates reveal that the predicted threat of unionization did not significantly raise non union wages in the united states in 1980

an evaluation of yts the youth training scheme yts is much the most significant public policy intervention in the uk training market since the 1964 industrial training act ita this paper presents an economic evaluation of yts we begin in part ii by outlining the history and mechanics of the scheme part iii describes the market failure or failures which yts addresses and part iv assesses how successful it has been in tackling these problems finally part v considers the scheme s future what further changes are needed to improve its effectiveness

an empirical test of an asymmetric information model of strikes recent developments in the theory of strategic bargaining demonstrate how informational asymmetries can lead to prolonged and costly bargaining these models can be applied to contract negotiations yielding an economic theory of strikes to date however few empirical tests of these models have been carried out in this paper a set of predictions concerning the incidence and unconditional duration of strikes is derived from a simple bargaining model in which the union is uncertain about the firm s future profitability these predictions are then tested on a micro data set of major u s contract negotiations that took place from 1973 to 1977

union relative wage effects a survey of macro estimates this paper surveys union wage effect estimates drawn from empirical cross section wage equations fitted to macro aggregated data in 34 post 1963 studies containing such equations each estimate is the partial derivative of the dependent wage variable in logarithmic units with respect to the extent of unionism fraction unionized variable in the equation this paper shows that these estimates contain a mixture in uncertain ratio of the union nonunion wage differential or wage gap on the one hand and an extent of unionism effect on the other therefore the macro estimates should not be interpreted as wage gap estimates

nominal and real union wage differentials and the effects of industry and smsa density 1973 83 many studies have examined the influence of union density union members as a percentage of all workers on earnings in the private sector but few such studies have looked at the public sector using data from the 1991 current population survey this

strikes and wages a test of an asymmetric information model this paper describes a simple model of labor disputes based on the hypothesis that unions use strikes to infer the profitability of the firm the model posits the existence of a negatively sloped resistance curve between wages and strike duration in addition it offer a series of predictions relating wage and strike outcomes to changes in the expected profitability of the firm and changes in the alternative opportunities of striking workers these implications are tested using data on wage outcomes strike probabilities and strike durations for a large sample of collective bargaining agreements

longitudinal analysis of strike activity this article presents an empirical study of strike activity in a panel of contract negotiations for some 250 firm and union pairs evidence is presented on two sources of variation in dispute rates changes in the characteristics of the collective bargaining agreement that affect subsequent strike outcomes and the effects of lagged strikes on the incidence and duration of subsequent disputes strike probabilities are significantly affected by the duration and expiration month of the previous agreement dispute rates are also increased by the occurrence of a short strike during the previous negotiations and reduced by the occurrence of a long strike

unions and the labor market status of white and minority youth this paper presents data showing that unions have a very substantial effect on the wages of young union workers particularly young blacks but that they also have a negative effect on the wages of young blacks who are not unionized the effects of unions on employment are negative for both groups and especially for blacks in addition the data indicate that young blacks within the labor force have union membership rates that are roughly comparable to those of young whites but rates for young blacks are lower after accounting for differences in the rate of labor force participation of young blacks and whites young blacks also continue to be underrepresented in strongly unionized crafts and in the construction industry while being overrepresented in the weakly organized and low wage service sector these results suggest the need to improve further the access of blacks to unionized employment

careers guidance psychometric testing and unemployment amongst young people an empirical analysis for northern ireland psychometric tests continue to form an important part of careers guidance for young people of school leaving age throughout the uk in the existing literature there is little evidence about the impact of testing on subsequent labour market success this paper presents a quantitative analysis of the effect of testing in northern ireland on young people s subsequent experiences of unemployment and long term unemployment between the ages of 16 and 18 on account of the sample selection problem standard single equation estimates of the effects of testing are likely to give biased results and so the bivariate probit model is used in the estimation the results suggest that although testing is not having an adverse impact it is not having a statistically significant positive effect this may be attributable to some aspects of test administration in northern ireland which in many cases seems to fall short of recommended guidelines

sequential bargaining with incomplete information this paper describes a simple two person two period bargaining game and solves it using the concept of perfect bayesian equilibrium in which the actions of each player convey information which is used by his opponent the paper examines the effects of changes in bargaining costs the size of the contract zone and the length of the bargaining process on such aspects of the solution as the probability of impasse and the likelihood of concessions the combination of information transfer and the lack of pre commitment embodied in perfectness yields many surprising results common perceptions about the effects of parameter changes on bargaining processes are suspect and should be checked in the particular game being discussed

stagflationary effects of monetary stabilization policies a quantitative analysis of south korea this paper presents a macro model of the korean economy that focuses on short run macro economic adjustment and more in particular on the transmission channels of monetary policy between the financial and the real sector of the economy in addition to the usual link between monetary policy and aggregate demand via investment the link between monetary policy and the supply side of the economy via the financing of working capital with borrowed funds is incorporated this link can potentially reverse the short run impact of tight money on inflation and aggregate the impact on output both export prices and domestic prices show a significant sensitivity to cost of financing working capital this credit supply side link gives a stagflationary bias to restrictive credit policies the empirical relevance of this phenomenon is strongly supported by the simulation results derived with the model structurally section 2 of the paper focuses on the real sector part of the model section 3 discusses the financial sector in section 4 different monetary stabilization packages are simulated using the model presented in sections 2 and 3 and alternative policy measures are discussed the simulation runs show strong short run stagflationary effects of tight money policies

learning in sequential wage negotiations theory and evidence when union firm pairs bargain sequentially and when unobserved components of firms abilities to pay are subject to correlated shocks unions that bargain later in a sequence can acquire valuable information by observing previous bargaining outcomes in their industry we derive the implications of this kind of learning in an asymmetric information model of wage negotiations and argue that the most robust implication is a lower incidence of strikes among followers than leaders in wage negotiations considerable empirical support for this implication is found in a long panel of canadian contract negotiations

strategic delay in bargaining this paper analyses a bargaining model with incomplete information in which the time between offers is an endogenous strategic variable we find equilibria involving a delay to agreement that is due to the use of strategic time delay by bargainers to signal their relative strength under some specifications of the parameters delay is present in the unique sequential equilibrium whose beliefs satisfy one intuitive restriction this delay does not vanish as the minimal time between offers becomes small