the impact of market structure on wages fringe benefits and turnover this paper examines the relationship between labor compensation and the structure of the product market which is measured by the industry concentration ratio and by dummy variables for the existence and type of government regulation unlike previous studies that have estimated the impact of concentration and regulation on wages or earnings this study extends the analysis to include the effect of market structure on employer provided pensions and insurance and on voluntary labor turnover the hypothesis that product market power raises labor compensation is supported by empirical results indicating that concentration increases wages and fringes but lowers voluntary labor turnover regulations that set minimum prices and restrict entry raise labor compensation since wage premiums due to regulation are not offset by lower pensions and insurance or higher turnover other forms of regulation such as profit regulation in public utilities are found to reduce labor compensation as evidenced by higher turnover or lower wages and fringes or both

effects of indirect taxation in a mixed oligopoly abstract in a mixed oligopoly an increase in tax ad valorem or specific does not change total output but increases the output of the public firm and the tax revenue also privatization may increase both tax revenue and welfare

wage inflation unionization and monopoly power this paper uses panel data from 301 four digit manufacturing industries over the years 1959 to 1980 to examine how market structure affects the wage response to aggregate demand disturbances the authors use a new classical macroeconomic framework in which such shocks are identified with the unexpected component of money growth they find that product market power does not affect the response of wages to such shocks but that unionization does to be specific greater unionization leads to a faster wage response they also find that wages rise equiproportionately with expected money growth i e expected money is neutral copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

a mixed oligopoly in the presence of foreign private firms in this paper a mixed oligopoly model is considered in which a state owned public firm competes with both domestic and foreign private firms previous articles on mixed oligopoly did not include foreign private firms the effect on the equilibrium involves a lower price and a different allocation of production relative to the case when all private firms are domestically owned in addition issues such as the effects of an open door policy allowing foreign firms to enter and the effects of foreign acquisition of domestic firms are discussed

relative earnings and individual union membership in the united kingdom considerable attention has been focused in recent years on the empirical analysis of the effect of trade unions on the structure of earnings such empirical investigation usually entails measurement of the union non union differential in wages or earnings at the level of the individual this involves comparison of the earnings of union members with estimates of what their earnings would be were they not union members or equivalently examination of differences in earnings between individuals comparable with regard to all other relevant characteristics who differ in their union membership alone in the united kingdom all previous attempts at estimation of this differential have used aggregate data at either the industry or occupation level 1 the conventional methodology involves regression of the logarithm of the average wage on either the proportion of workers who are union members or the proportion covered by a collective agreement together with a vector of industry characteristics that are deemed to determine the non union wage however several problems are immediately apparent with this methodology first the model ignores the possibility of variation in the differential across industries which has potentially serious consequences second the vector of other characteristics customarily used is somewhat limited and raises doubts concerning the adequacy of the standardization for what might loosely be termed labour quality third only a sub sample of industries is ever used owing to lack of data those industries excluded are generally smaller in terms of employment that those included if the differential varies with the size of the industry a further bias will be induced all of these problems are either removed or lessened by the use of individual level data for an analysis of their impact at the industry level see geroski and stewart 1981 2 as a result it is now widely accepted that the appropriate way to measure such differentials is to use micro data sets at the level of the individual worker until recently suitable data have not been available for the united kingdom and hence such analysis was not possible this paper presents the first estimates for the united kingdom based on individual level data if the value of the union non union differential were the same for all workers in the unionized sector analysis at the industry level and the individual level would produce similar results however the marshallian laws of derived demand suggest that this will not be the case despite this clear prediction of variation in the differential there has been little systematic investigation of the variation this paper also presents such an analysis since variation in the differential across industries results in aggregation bias in industry level studies such an analysis is of considerable relevance to the evaluation of the evidence from such studies as well as being of interest in its own right the paper is laid out as follows section i presents a method of estimating the union non union differential at the individual level while section ii

trade policy and mixed enterprises this paper demonstrates that the degree of state ownership affects neither the level of socially optimal activities nor welfare if the government chooses optimal trade policy instruments in the case of rivalry in the home market the optimal import tariff is independent of the degree of state ownership and the optimal production subsidy decreases with state ownership if the optimal tariff is positive for the case of cournot rivalry in a third market the optimal export subsidy increases with state ownership while in the case of bertrand rivalry with differentiated products the optimal export tax increases

a public choice model of trade union behaviour and membership it is commonly assumed in the microeconomic literature concerned with trade union behaviour that the union maximises an aggregate utility function defined over homogeneous individuals and that the level of membership is fixed the purpose of this paper is to relax these two assumptions it is suggested below that trade unions may usefully be treated as political organisations comprising heterogeneous individuals and that the effects of union wage policies on the level of membership should be explicitly incorporated into the model consider first the assumption that the union is a homogeneous organisation this is often a convenient simplification but observation of the behaviour and government of trade unions suggests it is hardly realistic trade unions in the united kingdom are large groups based on a complex organisational structure comprising an executive a shop steward system and a body of rank and file members once the union is considered as a complex organisation the question arises as to how members preferences are transmitted through the hierarchical levels each of which may have conflicting aims there are two polar theoretical approaches to this question in the industrial relations literature clegg i980 at one extreme unions are seen as oligarchies unresponsive to members wishes full time officials it is argued secure a monopoly of power to stay in office with the assistance of low membership participation and apathy at the other extreme unions are regarded as organisations which are quasi democratic due to the presence of informal parties or factions the growth of workplace organisation and the existence of voting and postal or workplace balloting these two polar approaches to trade unions as large organisations may be linked up to parallel economic analyses of organisations if it is believed that trade unions are oligarchies then it may be enlightening to apply to unions economic models of bureaucracy or models of the firm comprising both shareholders and management alternatively if it is believed that trade unions are democratic organisations then public choice behavioural models may be enlightening the public choice model is chosen in this paper in preference to modern theories of the firm or of bureaucracies because it is believed that the public choice model represents a closer first approximation to trade union behaviour in the united kingdom although of course some particular unions may better fit the oligarchic model the second major concern of this paper is to relax the assumption of a fixed level of union membership the use of a fixed membership assumption in the

reform of the coal sector in an open economy the case of china cheap abundant and easy to transport and store coal has been produced and consumed to meet people s energy needs the last decade s growth in global coal use has been driven mainly by developing economies like china whose phenomenal economic growth has been powered by coal fired electricity and promoted by the export of manufactured goods a recent reform focus in china s coal sector is on coal taxation the paper develops a game theoretic model tailored to the context of china where coal taxation reform takes place against the background of privatisation of coal firms and an open economy it finds that the adoption of special coal taxes is optimal for social welfare under most circumstances but may induce coal firms to commit opportunistic behaviour in the process of privatisation the paper also cautions about potential resistance to the reform from consumers coal firms and government officials

union nonunion compensation differentials and industry structure abstract this paper examines the impacts of industry output and labor input market structures on workers total compensation in u s manufacturing for empirical analysis cps may 1983 data were matched with 1982 census of manufacturing results indicate that employees in highly concentrated product markets proxied by four firm concentration ratio crr earn more independent of their union membership second union members in the smaller plant sizes have the most to gain and the union advantage disappears for medium to large plants third and perhaps most important the joint effects of unionism and crr on earnings depend on the size of the manufacturing plant in conclusion the paper finds support for dowrick s 1989 conjecture that profits enhancing product market conditions generally tend to increase earnings

mixed oligopoly sequential entry and spatial price discrimination this paper is the first to examine the welfare consequences of a public firm in a traditional model of spatial price discrimination it demonstrates that when a private firm acts as a stackelberg location leader the presence of a public firm always improves welfare moreover when three firms locate sequentially the presence of a public firm improves social welfare unless it locates last thus despite examining a variety of location timings including simultaneous location privatization never improves welfare and usually harms welfare this conclusion differs from several currently in the literature in which privatization often improves welfare

organizational choices for efficiency and market power abstract we examine the role of strategic consideration in the choice of organizational structures characterizing large corporations these considerations bridge the gap between the research on transaction costs and organizational forms and the research on strategic entry deterrence and threats an illustrative model is presented and we derive propositions which look promising for providing empirical benchmarks

strategic hiring to deter entry by unions abstract this paper presents a model of firms engaging in defensive investments designed to increase the elasticity of their demand for labor before hiring workers this allows them to lower the wage at which unionization of their workers is prevented product differentiation is given as an example of a strategy by which workers are deterred from forming unions

concubinage or marriage informal and formal cooperations for innovation based on a sample of german inno innovating firms that contains information on formal and informal innovation cooperation between customers and suppliers we state that firms perceive informal cooperation as being more important than formal cooperation modes we then investigate the determinants of firms decisions to engage into the respective cooperation modes in line with previous empirical work we do not find much empirical evidence for the relevance of incoming spillovers in addition our results suggest that this finding holds as well for informal cooperations a firms ability to protect its proprietary innovations however seems to be a key determinant of formal as well as informal cooperations furthermore absorptive capacity and the organizational structure of in house r d play an important role another relevant driver of vertical cooperations are the innovation dynamics at the he industry level firms who operate an r d department and firms who are involved in costly r d projects tend to cooperate formally rather than informally

do state trading exporters distort trade abstract in this paper we analyse the trade distorting effects of state trading enterprises stes which exist in some exporting countries because of these potential effects several countries have raised the issue of state enterprises in the doha round negotiations in the wto the belief is that stes in certain developed countries have trade effects which are equivalent to an export subsidy stes also exist in developing countries though since the aim of government policy may differ from the developed country case the trade distortion may be equivalent to an export tax we present a theoretical model that is sufficiently general to allow us to consider the case of exporting stes in developed and developing economies the model is calibrated with data on two examples of stes one typical of an ste in a developed country the other typical of an ste in a developing economy in each case we allow for differences in the nature of the ste s pay off function the overall conclusion is that stes do distort trade and the trade distortion effect is potentially significant

unions and monopoly profits using cross sectional data for u s manufacturing the author identifies a negative effect of unions on the profits of highly concentrated industries and virtually no effect on the profits of unconcentrated industries the results for concentrated industries are explained in terms of the monopoly model which predicts a negative effect of unions on profits equivalent to the change in employer s surplus the monopoly model also suggests that previous profit studies which omitted the union variable were likely to significantly underestimate the relationship between concentration and profits this prediction is also supported by empirical evidence m sany studies have demonstrated the ability of unions to raise wages above the level of nonunion workers higher union wages in turn may affect the level of prices employment capital intensity productivity and profits recent studies by clark 1982 and freeman 1983 have found significant negative effects of unions on profit rates in the united states using line of business data from 1970 to 1980 for 900 firms clark found a negative effect of unions on the rate of return to capital more specifically the union effects were found to be significantly negative when market shares were low and insignificant when market shares were high according to clark the absence of a union effect in the latter case can be explained by the ability of firms with market power to pass on higher union wages into higher prices 1982 p 47 on the other hand freeman 1983 using data from the survey of manufactures from 1958 to 1976 and the internal revenue service from 1965 to 1976 also found a negative effect of unions on profits contrary to clark s results however the union profit effect was negative only in concentrated industries the point of contention appears to be the role of concentration in determining the union profit effect rather than the overall negative impact of unions the results of clark and freeman are important because previous industrial organization research on profit rates generally ignored unions for instance of the forty six profit studies surveyed by weiss 1974 none included a union variable more recently a profit study in this review by ravenscraft 1983 using high quality line of business data from the federal trade commission also ignored unionization as will be demonstrated the omission of the union variable leads to an understatement of the effect of industrial concentration on profits this means that concentrated industries generate much greater profits than indicated by previous research in order to measure the size of the understatement a new concept employer s surplus is developed which illustrates the theoretical impact of a union wage increase on monopoly profits the empirical estimates of employer s surplus in this paper indicate how monopoly profits are divided between firms and unions most of the data used in this study were obtained from james medoff and charles brown 2 unlike the previous two studies each observation corresponds to a state by two digit sic industry for manufacturing in 1972 because of the large variations in unionization across states this data set offers a useful test of the union profit effect i employer s surplus according to accepted theory the profit maximizing monopolist will employ labor up to the point where the market wage equals the marginal revenue product mrp 3 if for simplicity we assume that all other factors are variable then the mrp curve represents the monopolist s long run demand for labor in the absence of unions employment is determined by the intersection of the mrp curve and nonunion wage wn as pictured in figure 1 if unions raise wages to wa employment will decrease from ln to l with the reducreceived for publication november 28 1983 revision accepted for publication july 6 1984 eastern washington university i am very grateful to dave bunting lisa brown bill dickens claire brown and george strauss for their valuable suggestions on this research this paper is a revised version of chapter 3 from the author s ph d thesis the union impact on profits productivity and prices university of california berkeley 1 see parseley 1980 for a recent review of this literature 2 i would like to thank brown and medoff for making these data available to me 3 marginal revenue product is equal to marginal revenue multiplied by marginal physical product see rees 1979

monopoly plant and union effects on worker wages this paper examines the effects of industry concentration plant size and unionization on the wages of blue collar manufacturing workers the author points out that few previous wage studies have included all three of those variables or have employed data sufficiently detailed to test adequately their effect on wages this study using data primarily from the 1977 quality of employment survey demonstrates that concentration plant size and unionization all exercise significant and independent effects on wages

teachers unions and wages in the 1970s unionism now pays this paper provides evidence that confirms the results of previous studies that teacher unionism produced relatively small wage gains during the early 1970s but it also shows that union gains increased substantially in the late 1970s the evidence is based on an application of two complementary research designs cross section wage level regressions and cross section wage change regressions to national samples of teacher data for 1974 75 and 1977 78 the authors conclude that the union nonunion wage differential among teachers reached 12 to 22 percent by the late 1970s and during the period 1974 78 the real wages of unionized teachers increased while those of nonunionized teachers declined they offer several possible explanations for these trends

redistribution state trading enterprises and politically optimal tariffs state trading enterprises stes are widely used and can be viewed as instruments of trade policy we analyse two aspects the first is their potential trade distorting effect the second is how they modify the case for the politically optimal tariff we show that the ste can reduce the need for a tariff designed for domestic redistribution this result introduces some ambiguity about how stes are interpreted from a multilateralist perspective they should be dealt with in the same way as other non tariff barriers from a nationalistic perspective they can reduce the need for politically optimal redistribution entreprises d etat impliquees dans le commerce international et tarifs politiquement optimaux les entreprises d etat impliquees dans le commerce international eeici sont communement utilisees comme instruments de politique commerciale on analyse deux aspects de cette intervention le premier est leur effet potentiel de distorsion sur les flux commerciaux le second est jusqu a quel point cette intervention modifie l argument du tarif politiquement optimal on montre que les eeici peuvent reduire le besoin d un tarif defini pour des fins de redistribution au niveau domestique le resultat injecte une certaine ambiguite dans le traitement des eeici d un point de vue international on devrait les traiter comme toute autre barriere non tarifaire d un point de vue nationaliste ils peuvent reduire le besoin de faire appel au politiquement optimal

the structural determinants of union bargaining power this paper investigates the structural determinants of variation in union power across manufacturing industries using a pooled sample of unionized establishments from the expenditure on employee compensation surveys of 1968 72 the author estimates wage equations augmented with measures of product market structure bargaining structure and the size distribution of unions the results suggest that union wage gains are greatest where discretionary pricing power enhances employers ability to pay and where unions achieve high coverage practice centralized bargaining and avoid union fragmentation on the other hand centralized bargaining provides no advantage in competitive industries

efficient contracts with costly adjustment short run employment determination for airline mechanics this paper presents an empirical analysis of firm specific employment and wage outcomes for mechanics in the domestic airlines industry a dynamic contracting model is presented that incorporates both costly employment adjustment and potential gaps between contract wage rates and the opportunity value of workers time the model gives a useful description of the employment output linkage in the data but is less successful in capturing the dynamic relation between employment contract wage rates and wage rates outside the airline industry copyright 1986 by american economic association

market structure and inter industry wage differences the case of taiwan abstract this note reports the structure and the determinants of inter industry wage differences in the manufacturing sector of taiwan it was found that market concentrations are significantly correlated with wage differentials from this outcome we tentatively conclude that market structure is an important factor in generating wage income differentials

market structure and the demand for unionized labor frequently the separate branches of economics grow up with far too little cross fertilization as a consequence research and results taken for granted in one field are all too frequently ignored in another such is the case with the three decades of work done on pricing behavior within a vertical stream of production the general conclusion of this work is that input monopolies will not alter their price in response to alterations in downstream market structure it is surprising that this work carried out in industrial organization has not received more attention from those studying union wage behavior this is especially so given that several of the more popular models of union behavior are similar to those we impute to the neoclassical monopoly the failure to draw on this work has resulted in several confusions in the contemporary study of unions this paper builds from the work on input pricing to demonstrate that in a very wide variety of cases the elasticity of derived demand for labor is completely invariant to product market structure in addition the specific conditions sufficient for this invariance to hold true are identified such a demonstration is important for discriminating between models of union behavior which assume bargaining along the labor demand curve and models which assume bargaining off the demand curve indeed the demonstration reveals the likely inadequacy of the labor demand curve model the logic for this conclusion is three tiered first demand curve models predict that wages will depend crucially on the elasticity of labor demand second measures of industrial concentration are usually significant in wage equations a result thought in harmony with the elasticity emphasis of demand curve models but third as will be shown market structure will typically not affect the labor demand elasticity this suggests that the conventional interpretation of the second point is wrong and casts doubt on the explanatory power of demand curve models in general while a variety of specific models of union behavior share the characteristic of bargaining along the demand curve these models are tied together by the assumption that unions choose the wage and firms respond with the employment level thus whether one assumes that unions maximize the wage bill collective rents or some explicit objective function of wage and employment

the union impact on profits evidence from industry price cost margin data this paper uses industry price cost margin data to estimate the extent to which unions reduce profits estimates allowing for the endogeneity of union status are contrasted with estimates that assume union status is exogenous and not determined in part by either profitability or industry structure endogeneity is found to be an important consideration in estimating the union impact on profits two stage estimates are considerably larger than ols estimates the final section explores the total estimated redistribution from capital to labor in the manufacturing sector an important conclusion is that unions raise prices less than was previously believed

concentration and the inter industry wage structure the israeli manufacturing sector the paper analysis the inter industry wage differentials in the israeli manufacturing sector in conjunction with differences in the degree of competition in the various industries unlike some other studies carried out with us date that did not produce conclusive results this study shows a clear cut positive relationship between wages and the degree of monopolization this result is found both for unskilled and highly skilled workers

wage pressure bargaining and price cost margins in uk manufacturing to the extent that union employer bargaining is efficient price cost margins in oligopolistic industries are predicted to depend on wage rents and on the elasticity of substitution between wages and employment in union preferences unanticipated wage inflation will also affect margins cross section and time series analysis of price cost margins in u k manufacturing industries finds that margins tend to be eroded by the level of wage rents and are invariant to the rate of wage inflation copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

foreign investment vertical integration and local equity requirements the paper presents a spatial model in which a foreign firm and local government behave strategically in setting a local equity requirement ler contrary to simple intuition larger equity requirements may increase economic efficiency but this conclusion is highly sensitive to the vertical structure of the foreign firm when the foreign firm has monopoly power in both foreign upstream and domestic downstream markets the optimal equity requirement is zero surprisingly the introduction of domestic competition upstream causes the government to adopt a ler which lowers economic efficiency

the determinants of bargaining structure in u s manufacturing industries this study uses bls data on individual collective bargaining agreements and industry data from several sources to estimate the determinants of bargaining structure in the manufacturing sector probit analysis is used to estimate first the probability that a given agreement is multifirm rather than single firm in coverage and second the probability that a single firm agreement in a multiplant firm is less than firmwide in coverage industry concentration and plant size are found to be strongly associated with single firm as opposed to multifirm agreements other things equal among multiplant firms with single firm agreements however concentration and plant size strongly increase the probability of firmwide agreements in addition union rivalry tends to lead to decentralized bargaining units and labor intensity of production to centralized units

concentration price and critical concentration ratios a potentially important parameter that has not yet been convincingly estimated is the critical concentration ratio this paper attempts to estimate it in three types of market the estimation of a critical concentration ratio if one exists seems of potentially great importance because of its implication for antitrust policy if a critical concentration ratio were found and if concentration had no effect below that level it would seem to follow that a horizontal merger in a market where concentration was below the critical level and where the merger could not increase concentration to the critical level could not substantially lessen competition or tend to create monopoly

when competitive advantage doesn t lead to performance the resource based view and stakeholder bargaining power what if rent from a competitive advantage is appropriated so it cannot be observed in performance measures the resourcebased view was not formulated to examine who will get the rent yet this essay argues that the factors leading to a resource based advantage also predict who will appropriate rent knowledge based assets are promising because firm specificity social complexity and causal ambiguity make them hard to imit ate however the roles of internal stakeholders may grant them a great deal of bargaining power especially relative to investors this essay integrates the resource based view with the bargaining power literature by defining the firm as a nexus of contracts this new lens can help to explain when rent will be generated and simultaneously who will appropriate it in doing so it provides a more robust theory of firm performance than the resource based view alone it is also suggested that this lens might be useful for examining other theories of firm performance

mixed duopoly privatization and subsidization with excess burden of taxation we investigate optimal tax subsidy policies in mixed and private oligopolies with excess burden of taxation we compare the optimal subsidies and the resulting welfare levels among four regimes mixed and private cournot duopolies and stackelberg competition with public and private leaderships we show that in contrast to the existing works on the privatization neutrality theorem privatization affects resulting welfare duopole mixte privatisation et subsidisation en presence de fardeau fiscal excedentaire on examine les politiques optimales de taxes et de subventions dans le cas d oligopoles mixtes et prives en presence de fardeau fiscal excedentaire on compare les subsides optimaux et les effets sur le niveau de bien etre dans quatre regimes les duopoles de cournot mixte et prive et la concurrence a la stackelberg avec leadership public et prive on montre que contrairement a ce que suggeraient les travaux anterieurs sur le theoreme de la neutralite de la privatisation la privatisation affecte les niveaux de bien etre

the organization of r d and environmental policy abstract we consider a setting where firms undertake emission reducing r d and the regulator who sets the emission tax is unable to commit credibly firms are subject to research spillovers in emission reduction we examine two regimes with respect to the organization of r d independent r d and an environmental r d cartel erc environmental r d is higher in the erc compared to independent r d for small damages and also for large damages when r d is efficient in contrast when damages are large and r d is inefficient the opposite is true the same ranking applies to the comparison of social welfare

public policy and r d when research joint ventures are costly in this paper we examine the role of policy when forming a r d joint venture is costly contrary to previous studies we document an active role for public policy since the interests of firms are not necessarily aligned with societal interests the nature of policy however depends on the joint venture cost if it is relatively low then policy may call for subsidizing the joint venture to encourage collaboration if forming a joint venture is very costly however then there are cases where social welfare is improved if policy encourages r d competition with no joint venture jel classification d43 l13 politique publique et r d quand les alliances strategiques en recherche sont couteuses ce memoire examine le role de la politique publique quand la mise en place d une alliance strategique en recherche est couteuse contrairement a ce qu ont suggere des etudes anterieures les auteurs montrent qu il y a un role positif pour la politique publique a proportion que les interets des entreprises ne sont pas necessairement alignes sur les interets de la societe la nature de la politique depend cependant du cout de l alliance strategique si le cout est faible alors une politique de subvention pour encourager la collaboration peut s imposer si le cout est eleve alors il existe des cas ou une politique de concurrence dans le r d sans alliance strategique peut mieux servir le mieux etre collectif

technological progress and change in market concentration in the u s 1963 77 what effect does r d induced technological progress have on market structure do the concentration ratios the most used indices of market structure increase or decrease in an industry that is faced with a high level of technological opportunity and exploits it through a high rate of r d this paper focusses on a model by nelson and winter as a theoretical starting point to deal with this question in the nelson and winter model concentration increases as a result of dynamic competition in the technologically progressive industries but their model does not allow entry and the effect on concentration may be reversed if the possibility of entry is considered empirically this paper shows that concentration ratios in the high r d industries have decreased in the united states during 1963 77

mixed oligopoly with differentiated products abstract the paper analyzes a mixed oligopoly with horizontal product differentiation firms choose their location and price in a model a la hotelling with quadratic transport costs and the solution concept is a subgame perfect nash equilibrium this enables one to determine how the presence of one or several public firms competing with private ones affects social welfare and how the results depend on the total number of firms n and their relative positions it is shown that is only for n 2 or n 6 that a mixed oligopoly with one public firm is socially preferable to the private oligopoly

the trade distorting effect of state trading enterprises in importing countries abstract this paper focuses on the potential trade distorting effect of state trading enterprises an issue that is likely to receive greater attention than hitherto in the context of the current agricultural negotiations in the wto although state trading enterprises can arise in both exporting and importing countries the emphasis here is on the importing country case our results show that state trading enterprises do distort trade though the nature of the distortion i e whether it is equivalent to an import tariff or import subsidy depends on the nature of exclusive rights bestowed by government on the state enterprise we also consider state trading enterprises in both developed and developing economies the main difference being the nature of the government s pay off function the theoretical framework allows us to derive the tariff equivalent effects for various types of stes the results suggesting that the trade distorting effect is likely to vary considerably dependent on the type of ste that arises in particular circumstances

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

probation length and teacher salaries does waiting pay off tenure policies for elementary and secondary school teachers is a controversial issue in many states but there is virtually no empirical evidence on how tenure affects teacher labor markets this paper begins to fill this research void by using cross state variation in tenure policies to identify the effects if any of the length of the probationary period on entry level teacher salaries using data from the schools and staffing survey the authors investigate whether districts in states with longer probationary periods offer higher wages to teachers as a way to compensate for the extended evaluative period results suggest that they do although effects are concentrated in districts that are most likely to be competing for teachers with districts in neighboring states with shorter probation periods the authors also find that the relationship between probation length and wages is stronger for experienced teachers and in districts that engage in collective bargaining

worker replacement costs and unionization origins of the u s labor movement the embattled state of u s labor has generated a voluminous body of research on the processes of deunionization contributing to its decline revisiting the less researched topic of unionization this study explores the social conditions facilitating union growth during the labor movement s formative years focusing on the first decade of the twentieth century in many respects for labor a period not unlike the present i seek to explain the pattern of organizing success and failure across industries and occupations i find that the most organized settings occurred where workers had greater disruptive capacities due to the high cost of being replaced during work stoppages the highest replacement costs were associated with three conditions scarcity of skilled labor geographically isolated worksites that raised the cost of importing strikebreakers and time sensitive tasks that rendered replacement workers economically impractical workplaces that had at least one of these conditions formed the backbone o

endogenous role in mixed markets a two production period model in this paper i investigate endogenous roles in a mixed duopoly where private and state owned public firms compete by allowing two production periods i find that many equilibria exist including the cournot type equilibrium and one stackelberg type equilibrium where the public firm becomes the follower however another stackelberg type equilibrium where the public firm becomes the leader does not exist if small inventory costs are introduced the unique equilibrium outcome becomes the stackelberg type where the public firm is the follower

subsidizing public inputs abstract if production cost savings associated with successful research and development are freely disseminated to other firms as soon as they are realized too few resources may be allocated to this activity subsidies to this activity a public input can lead to optimal input use the effectiveness of four alternative subsidy instruments in stimulating firms r d spending are examined two are incremental subsidies and two are level subsidies one of the incremental subsidies and one of the level subsidies crudely capture characteristics of incentive mechanisms used in many countries a laboratory implementation of these instruments confirms that incremental subsidies are inferior to level subsidies

wage effects of increased union coverage methodological considerations and new evidence although many studies show a positive relationship between extent of unionization and union members wages some analysts suggest that this relationship could reflect a concentration of labor organization in industries with potentially high wage gains rather than unions efficacy in raising wages consistent with that speculation studies across occupations or geographic areas generally show a much weaker relationship between unionization and wages than do studies across industries the authors of this study argue however that the weakness of the relationship found in some empirical research is due to the use of data sets mixing local market industries characterized by local bargaining with national market industries characterized by national bargaining an empirical analysis supports this hypothesis wages are positively correlated with the extent of unionization in a local market industry supermarkets but not in a national market industry aerospace

further evidence on returns to schooling by establishment size stolzenberg 1978 has argued thatfor white male employees the effect of schooling on logearnings is greater in larger establishments we replicate stolzenberg s study using the 1979 current population survey this survey includes information on establishment size and provides a much larger sample size to work with our results do not indicate a positive establishment size schooling interaction to the contrary when stolzenberg s 1978 model specification is used ourfindings suggest that the interaction may be negative we explore the sources of this discrepancy and are skeptical of the conventional wisdom that returns to schooling increase with establishment size

welfare consequence of an asymmetric regulation in a mixed bertrand duopoly abstract i investigate an asymmetric duopoly where a public enterprise must supply the demand it faces while a private enterprise has no such obligation i show that such an asymmetric regulation yields the first best outcome walrasian equilibrium

the effect of unionism on fringe benefits this study analyzes the impact of unionism on fringes paid to production workers using data on individual establishments it compares fringe expenditures in establishments having the same level of compensation per hour and finds that unionism raises the share of compensation allotted to fringes particularly to pensions vacation pay and life accident and health insurance in addition since unionism also raises the straight time wage rate itself a prime determinant of expenditures on fringes unionism has a very sizeable impact on total fringe expenditures as well as on the fringe share of compensation the union fringe effect exceeds in percentage terms the union wage effect and is sufficiently large to suggest that standard union wage studies understate the union effect on total compensation the study also compares the fringe expenditures of production and non production workers within the same establishment controlling for within establishment pay policies the findings suggest that the pres

the expansion of temporary help employment in the us 1982 1992 a test of alternative economic explanations employment in the temporary help supply ths industry more than tripled in the us between 1982 and 1992 during that period the variability and cyclical sensitivity of ths jobs their average weekly hours and real hourly earnings were extraordinarily high in addition changes in temporary employment levels disproportionately affect aggregate employment flows over this period one possible explanation of the dramatic rise and variability in ths jobs is demographic changes in the composition of the labour force towards groups believed to prefer impermanent job commitment or temporal flexibility in supplying labour services a contrasting view considers it part of an explicit human resource strategy increasingly adopted by firms seeking greater numerical or cost flexibility this strategy may reflect an employer response to greater volatility in demand intensifying price competition pressures in product markets and rising quasi fixed costs incurred for permanent employees such as nonwage benefits a tw

the impact of public ownership in the lending sector we examine the effects of increased government ownership of suppliers in the lending sector which induces increased concern with total welfare and reduced concern with profit such increased ownership of a lender can have unanticipated effects for instance it can increase lender profit furthermore borrower welfare often declines as government ownership increases in a lender with a relatively limited ability to discern the true quality of borrowers projects in addition there are settings in which increased government ownership of a lender has no impact on either lender profit or borrower welfare resume l impact de la propriete publique sur le secteur des prets les auteurs examinent les effets de la propriete gouvernementale croissante des offreurs dans le secteur des prets un phenomene qui se traduit en un plus grand interet pour le bien etre global et un interet moindre pour le profit un tel accroissement de la propriete publique peut avoir des effets non anticipes par exemple cela peut accroitre les profits des preteurs de plus le bien etre des emprunteurs decline souvent a proportion que la croissance de la propriete gouvernementale d un preteur connote une competence relativement limitee pour discerner la veritable qualite des projets des emprunteurs enfin il existe des circonstances dans lesquelles l accroissement de la propriete gouvernementale d une institution preteuse n a aucun impact soit sur le profit du preteur soit sur le bien etre de l emprunteur

market structure and worker quality it is frequently asserted although never directly tested that firms in more monopolistic industries hire better qualified workers this paper presents two new results first worker quality education in particular is a strong determinant of whether a worker is employed in a concentrated industry when using a traditional data source second upon expanding the data to include measures of research and development workers of better quality are actually no more likely to locate in concentrated industries these results fit with theories claiming that industries subject to technological opportunities may be more concentrated and that those opportunities demand higher quality workers i introduction at least a score of articles since the 1960s test the hypothesis that more concentrated industries pay workers higher wages other things equal this investigation has been part of a more general examination of whether or not concentrated structure generates inefficiencies beyond the deviation of price from cost unfortunately this large scale effort has not been rewarded with consistent results separate researchers both confirm and fail to confirm an independent role for industrial concentration in wage determination among those who fail to confirm the concentration earnings hypothesis one explanation is offered most often while concentrated industries pay higher wages they obtain better qualified workers the generally acknowledged simple correlation between wages and concentration becomes an insignificant partial correlation in the presence of a vector of controls while some of the typical controls could be considered measures of worker quality others clearly are not it may be one or more of these non quality controls which frequently include industry characteristics which eliminates the significance of concentration for example plant size and unionization known to be correlated with both wages and concentration are among the more likely non quality variables which could explain the lack of the authors thank william j adams william g shepherd gary solon and frank p stafford their suggestions improved early versions of this paper thanks is also expressed to almarin phillips who suggested the association with technological progress those confirming a positive statistical association between wages and industrial concentration include dalton and ford 119771 mellow 119831 kwoka 119831 long and link 119831 and heywood 119861 those failing to find such an association include weiss 119661 rapping 1967 pugel i9801 and freeman and medoff 119811

unions and the capture of economic rents an investigation using british firm level data this paper considers the relationship between unions and profitability in a sample of large british firms in 1984 and 1985 the initial finding is that unionised firms have significantly lower profit margins than otherwise comparable non union firms tests of whether the ability of unions to influence profit margins varies with the product and labour market characteristics of the firms in which they are located are then conducted the ability of unions to capture economic rents is seen to be significantly greater in firms which have a high market share and or operate in highly unionised industries

can union labor ever cost less this paper examines the effect of unions on efficiency by estimating cost function systems over three different sets of construction projects the results show that union contractors have greater economies of scale this gives them a cost advantage in large commercial office buildings but in school and hospital construction nonunion contractors have lower costs at all output levels despite the cost differences profits for nonunion contractors in school and hospital construction are no higher than those for union contractors because the burden of higher union costs is shifted to buyers

mixed duopoly location choice and shadow cost of public funds we examine the relationship between equilibrium and efficient levels of product differentiation in a mixed duopoly where a welfare maximizing public enterprise competes with a profit maximizing private firm we introduce shadow costs of public funding i e the excess burden of taxation the profits of public firms obtained by the government reduce these costs we find that in a mixed duopoly the level of product differentiation is too low for social welfare this result is in sharp contrast to the private oligopoly where the level of product differentiation is too high finally we show that when the shadow cost is high privatizing the public enterprise improves welfare

game theoretic models of mixed oligopoly abstract in this paper we review various models that have been proposed for the study of mixed oligopoly that is markets in which private and public firm compete on equal basis using only market instruments

mixed oligopoly privatization and strategic trade policy this paper investigates the effects of privatization in the presence of strategic trade policies within an international mixed oligopoly serving a single market if the government uses a domestic production subsidy then welfare is always increased with privatization while the optimal subsidy falls if the government uses an import tariff privatization increases welfare over much of the parameter space the optimal tariff however may rise or fall in recent years many countries around the world are privatizing their state owned industries at the same time many of these countries are also showing remarkable changes in their economic policies toward international trade on many occasions tariffs are significantly altered and domestic production subsidies are substantially reduced for example russia has privatized its aircraft industry and doubled its tariff on imported aircraft colombia has privatized its stateowned automobile maker colombia automotriz and reduced the import tariffs on foreign made cars in argentina the government is pursuing a policy of selective privatization and subsequent reduction of subsidies in western europe countries such as germany and spain have privatized their major airlines lufthansa and iberia respectively and significantly reduced subsidies what is the connection between privatization and strategic trade policies does privatization require a welfare maximizing government to alter trade barriers the objective of this paper is to answer these questions by investigating the interaction between privatization and strategic trade policies the effects of privatization are typically analyzed in the context of mixed oligopoly models where state owned welfare maximizing public firms interact with profit maximizing private firms 1 we investigate the interaction between privatization and strategic trade policies by incorporating strategic trade instruments in an international mixed oligopoly model specifically we consider two strategic trade instruments an import tariff and a domestic production subsidy the government chooses the optimal level of tariff or subsidy to maximize domestic welfare for each trade instrument we primarily focus on two questions first does privatization increase

on the contract curve a test of alternative models of collective bargaining the traditional model of collective bargaining confines unions to settlements constrained by the employer s labor demand curve but an alternative model places wage employment outcomes on a contract curve that extends beyond the labor demand curve this paper derives a multidimensional hedonic contract curve model in which employment security provisions are used to maintain efficient bargains outside the employer s demand curve and distinguishes empirically between the contract curve and demand constraint models using data for public school teachers in new york state estimates clearly support the contract curve model over the demand constraint model by linking the gap between compensation and the value of the marginal product to the strength of employment security provisions

unionized construction workers are more productive this paper presents evidence on the effect of unionism on productivity in construction the linkages are distinct from those studied previously in industrial settings apprenticeship training and hiring halls probably raise union productivity while jurisdictional disputes and restrictive work rules lower it using brown and medoff s methodology union productivity measured by value added per employee is 44 to 52 percent higher than nonunion the estimate declines to 17 to 22 percent when estimates of interarea construction price differences are used to deflate value added occupational mix differences and possibly apprenticeship training account for 15 to 27 percent of this difference

imported inputs and privatization in downstream mixed oligopoly with foreign ownership this paper examines welfare implications of privatization in a mixed oligopoly with vertically related markets where an upstream foreign monopolist sells an essential input to public and private firms located downstream in the domestic country the impact on domestic welfare of privatizing the downstream public firm is shown to contain three effects the first is an output distortion effect which negatively affects welfare since privatization decreases the production of final good for consumption the second is an input price lowering effect resulting from a decrease in derived demand for the input when the level of privatization increases a decrease in final good production lowers input demand causing input price to decline and domestic welfare to increase the third is a rent leaking effect associated with foreign ownership in the downstream private firm the rival domestic firm strategically increases its final good production causing profits accrued to foreign investors to increase and domestic welfare to decline without foreign ownership in the downstream private firm the optimal policy toward the public firm is complete privatization as the output distortion effect is dominated by the input price lowering effect with foreign ownership however complete privatization can never be socially optimal due to the additional negative impact on domestic welfare of the rent leaking effect we further discuss implications for domestic welfare under different privatization schemes e g selling the privatization shares to the upstream foreign monopolist or to the rival domestic firm

concentration unionism and labor earnings a sample selection approach using a simultaneous equations model of wages and union membership the elasticity of the wage with respect to market concentration is estimated to be approximately 0 2 the estimate uses a large data set and extensive controls to measure concentration s direct effect on the wage an indirect effect through unionization and a feedback effect the indirect effect represents the majority of concentration s effect copyright 1988 by mit press

union membership determination and industry characteristics recent literature on the economics of unionism has expanded beyond its customary focus on the wage and nonwage effects of collective bargaining and given increased attention to the determinants of union membership previous union membership studies have been couched primarily within an individual choice framework whereby utility maximizing individuals choose either to join or not to join a union empirical work typically treats membership as a function of some vector of personal characteristics 1 2 10 11 21 it is our contention that such studies can best be interpreted as explaining the determination of the union status of jobs and that several industry and firm characteristics in addition to personal characteristics can be expected to affect significantly union membership in this paper theory and evidence relating to the effects of firm and industry characteristics on union membership are presented industry level data are bridged with a large microdata set containing individual characteristics in order to examine the determinants of unionism among workers in manufacturing utilizing a simultaneous model and controlling for sample selection bias we find that product market concentration capital intensity establishment size and job risk significantly affect the likelihood of union membership

should civil servants be restricted in wage bargaining a mixed duopoly approach abstract should civil servants employees in the public sector be allowed to bargain collectively to answer this question we construct a model of unionized mixed duopoly and examine the regulatory framework of public institutions especially focusing on a wage regulation imposed on the public firm the wage regulation turns out to yield critical welfare implications as it gives rise to two opposing strategic effects the wage regulation intensifies downstream market competition while it loosens upstream market competition the overall welfare effect is ambiguous depending crucially on the degree of product differentiation between the firms we also show that in contrast to the popular belief granting the right to bargain collectively to civil servants would not necessarily help them because they tend to demand excessively high wages when they are allowed to bargain collectively finally we briefly discuss a new perspective on the role of profit motives in public institutions when the wages are determined endogenously

employment determination in a unionized public sector labor market the case of ontario s school teachers a standard efficient contracts model of employment determination in a unionized labor market is contrasted with a naive model of labor supply and demand that allows for the possibility of monopsony in the market for public school teachers the standard model is consistent with the data and suggests that employment contracts are strongly efficient but a more surprising result is that the simple supply demand model is not rejected by the data either estimates of the latter suggest that the demand for teachers is inelastic and that the supply curve is slightly upward sloping rather than perfectly elastic at the union wage

r d competition between public and private sectors abstract we investigate a mixed market where a welfare maximizing public research institute competes against profit maximizing private firms we investigate r d competition by using a standard model of patent races where each firm chooses both its innovation size and r d expenditure we find that the innovation size r d expenditure chosen by the public institute is too small too large from the viewpoint of social welfare respectively and so the government should control the public institute appropriately we also discuss the welfare implications of privatization of public research institutes

endogenous timing in a mixed oligopoly abstract endogenous order of moves is analyzed in a mixed oligopoly where the firms first choose the timing for choosing their quantities the results are strikingly different from those obtained in a corresponding oligopoly with all profit maximizing firms

market share and efficiency a reprise abstract a recent major study claims to have demonstrated the validity of the efficient market hypothesis this conclusion is unwarranted further empirical work suggests that market share is an element of industrial structure and may itself be a reflection of market power

the scope of bargaining and bargaining outcomes in the public schools this study examines state to state variations in the legality of bargaining over class size in public schools to determine first whether these variations in the legal scope of bargaining bear any relationship to actual class sizes and second whether these variations are indirectly associated with teachers salaries using a model of the quality of education to analyze data from the 1977 census of governments on 4 851 independent school districts the author concludes that restrictions on class size bargaining are associated with both larger student teacher ratios and higher teachers salaries he also finds that the availability of voluntary arbitration and the limited right to strike are related to lower student teacher ratios

bargaining and the determinants of teacher salaries this study examines the impact of collective bargaining on salary setting in public school districts using a 1969 82 sample of oregon school districts the author focuses particularly on the roles

mixed oligopoly and spatial agglomeration abstract we investigate a mixed market where a state owned welfare maximizing public firm competes against profit maximizing private firms we use a circular city model with quantity setting competition in contrast to a pure market case discussed by pal 1998a spatial agglomeration of private firms always appears in equilibrium all private firms locate at the same point and the public firm locates at the opposite side we also find that this equilibrium pattern of the location is second best provided that output of each private firm cannot be controlled by the social planner jel classification h42 l13 oligopole mixte et agglomeration spatiale les auteurs examinent un marche mixte ou une entreprise publique possedee par l etat et cherchant a maximiser le niveau de bien etre est en concurrence avec des entreprises privees qui cherchent a maximiser leurs profits on utilise un modele de cite circulaire ou la concurrence se fait en choisissant la quantite produite en contraste avec le cas du marche parfait discute par pal 1998a l agglomeration spatiale des entreprises privees parait etre en equilibre toutes les entreprises privees se localisent au meme point et l entreprise publique se localise du cote oppose il appert que ce pattern d equilibre de localisation est un equilibre de second ordre compte tenu du fait que la production de chaque entreprise privee ne peut etre controlee par le planificateur social