labor law reform and the role of delay in union organizing empirical evidence from canada this paper examines the determinants and consequences of delay in the union certification process using data from certification applications and unfair labor practice complaints ulps from british columbia 1986 98 and ontario 1993 98 during the period studied there were several changes in delay related laws including laws regulating the presence and stringency of election time limits and the availability of expedited ulp hearings key findings are that ulps against the employer reduced the likelihood of compliance with time limit laws except where expedited ulp hearings also existed employer filed objections to the application reduced the likelihood of compliance and election delay reduced the likelihood of certification success both in policy regimes without time limits and in those where stipulated time limits were frequently breached overall the results suggest that enforced time limits on elections coupled with expedited ulp hearings may substantially mitigate the adverse effects of election delay on certification success

union characteristics and bargaining outcomes this paper investigates the impact of union militancy size centralization and democracy on wages fringe benefits and other bargaining outcomes using data on bargaining outcomes at the bargaining unit level in conjunction with data on comparative union characteristics the authors find strong evidence that union characteristics affect bargaining outcomes determining the exact nature of those effects is complicated by several problems notably the difficulty of distinguishing effects on outcomes from effects on goals the possibility of reverse causality and complex interactions between such organizational characteristics as democracy and centralization the findings do suggest however that organizational complexity reduces union bargaining effectiveness whereas democracy and centralization tend to change the shape of outcomes as opposed to their size

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

estimating the effect of change to win on union organizing in a 2005 effort to reinvigorate new member organizing efforts seven unions split from the american federation of labor and congress of industrial organizations afl cio to form a new union feder

agricultural outputs and conflict displacement evidence from a policy intervention in rwanda abstract in 1997 rwanda introduced a resettlement policy for refugees displaced during previous conflicts i exploit geographic variation in the speed of implementation of this policy to investigate the impact of conflict induced displacement and the resettlement policy on household agricultural output and on skill spillover mechanisms between returnees and stayers i find that returns to on farm labor are higher for returnees relative to stayers although the evidence suggests that the policy contributed little additional effect to this differential more speculatively these differentials suggest that upon return from conflict induced exile returnees are more motivated to increase their economic performance

the path from ethnic inequality to development the intermediary role of institutional quality abstract the influence of ethnic and income disparities in terms of their impacts on nations economic development have long intrigued researchers on the empirical side recent developments in creating a composite measure of income inequality based on ethnic diversity have shown a negative impact of ethnic inequality on economic development this approach while insightful ignores the crucial role of governmental institutions to account for this we introduce the intermediary role of an important dimension of institutional quality proxied by corruption and test employing mediation analysis whether it is a significant mediator in the effect of ethnic inequality on economic development using a cross section of data on a large sample of nations results show a significant negative impact of ethnic inequality on development that is indeed channeled through corruption specifically findings suggest that about two thirds of ethnic inequality s influence on economic development flows through corruption whereas only one third of the total influence is directly ascribed to ethnic inequality thus policy efforts to control ethnic and income disparities that do not take account of the influence of corruption are unlikely to attain development goals

rating the raters are reputation concerns powerful enough to discipline rating agencies abstract credit rating agencies cras are accused of bearing a strong responsibility for contributing to the subprime crisis by having been deliberately too lax in the ratings of some structured products in response to this accusation cras argue that such an attitude would be too dangerous for them since their reputation is at stake the objective of this article is to examine the validity of this argument within a formal model are reputation concerns sufficient to discipline rating agencies we show that the reputation argument only works when a sufficiency large fraction of the cra income comes from other sources than rating complex products by contrast when rating complex products becomes a major source of income for the cra we show that it is always too lax with a positive probability and inflates ratings with probability one when its reputation is good enough we provide some empirical support for this prediction by showing that ceteris paribus the proportion of subprime residential mortgage backed securities rmbs that were rated aaa by the three main cras indeed increased over the last eight years we analyze the policy implications of our findings and advocate for a new business model of cras that we call the platform pays model

an empirical analysis of the unionization of foreign manufacturing firms in the u s the ability of american labor unions to organize workers in majority and wholly foreign owned manufacturing plants in the u s is examined by analyzing union representation election results the principal conclusions are that the nationality of a firm is not a significant factor influencing election outcomes and that foreign firms are as difficult to unionize as domestic american firms several reasons are offered to explain these findings

holding on ethnic divisions political institutions and the duration of economic declines abstract we analyze the duration of large economic declines and provide a theory of delayed recovery we show theoretically that uncertain post recovery incomes lead to a commitment problem which limits the possibility of cooperation in ethnically heterogeneous countries strong constraints on the executive solve this problem by reducing the uncertainty associated with cooperative behavior we test the model using standard data on linguistic heterogeneity and detailed data on ethnic power configurations our findings support the central theoretical prediction countries with more constrained political executives experience shorter economic declines the effect is large in ethnically heterogeneous countries but virtually non existent in homogeneous societies our main results are robust to a variety of perturbations regarding the estimation method the estimation sample measures of heterogeneity and measures of institutions

the control of politicians in divided societies the politics of fear autocrats in many developing countries have extracted enormous personal rents from power in addition they have imposed inefficient policies including pervasive patronage spending i present a model in which the presence of ethnic identities and the absence of institutionalized succession processes allow the ruler to elicit support from a sizeable share of the population despite large reductions in welfare the fear of falling under an equally inefficient and venal ruler that favours another group is enough to discipline supporters the model predicts extensive use of patronage ethnic bias in taxation and spending patterns and unveils a new mechanism through which economic frictions translate into increased rent extraction by the leader these predictions are consistent with the experiences of bad governance ethnic bias wasteful policies and kleptocracy in post colonial africa

right to work laws and the extent of unionization it is a well known fact that the extent of unionization is less in states with right to work rtw laws a framework is developed for determining whether rtw laws actually cause a decrease in the extent of unionization or whether they simply mirror preexisting tastes of workers against unions a set of empirical tests is proposed that can distinguish between these explanations based on differences between rtw and non rtw states in the demand for union representation the supply of union jobs relative to that demand and the observed union nonunion wage differential these tests are implemented using disaggregated data from the quality of employment survey and the current population survey and a pattern is found that is consistent with the hypothesis that rtw laws simply mirror preexisting preferences against union representation

heterogeneity and collective management evidence from common forests in himachal pradesh india summary this paper conducts a statistical investigation into the impact of differences in economic benefits wealth and social classes within the community on collective management of forests there are two key results first social parochialism is not a pre requisite for collective management of forests moderate levels of social diversity are associated with low collective management but at high levels of social diversity collective management is high second moderate wealth heterogeneity is beneficial however at high levels and in the presence of benefit heterogeneity it decreases collective management similarly benefit heterogeneity reduces collective management if wealth heterogeneity also exists these results run counter to the dominant understanding of heterogeneity but may be seen as alternate explanations under a specific socioeconomic context

ethnicity and development in africa a reappraisal 131 enroll while membership is an entitlement that can be activated the entitlement is restricted by family membership as in other developing regions formal institutions are weak in modern africa and persons therefore tend to organize economic relationships through social institutions one way of augmenting the stock of capital is through education another is through migration to the city to a great degree it is families who organize the flow of resources that promote both urban migration and the acquisition of skills recognizing the central role of families in the formation of capital one can achieve a better grasp of the relationship between modernization and ethnicity to a significant degree modernization is achieved through the process of human capital formation this process is privately organized that is to say it is organized by families families organize the flow of resources between generations and sectors thus promoting the acquisition of skills and urban migration and thus the modernization of societies it is by stabilizing the contract between generations within family units that ethnic groups facilitate the process of investment to illustrate i use data collected from a village in luapula province zambia which supplies labor to the mining centers of zambia and congo when conducting my field work i focused on links between town and country and found that the income rural dwellers derived from town varied systematically with the structure size age composition and education of their families the coefficients in the remittance function suggested that an additional child yields on average 3 23 kwacha in the form of financial those who study modern africa commonly highlight three features its poverty its instability and its ethnic diversity whether in lurid popularizations e g robert kaplan 1994 or in social scientific research e g william easterly and ross levine 1997 but see also paul collier and a hoeffler 1998 scholars reason that africa is poor because it is unstable and that its instability derives from its ethnic complexity ethnicity thus lies it is held at the root of africa s development crisis this essay critiques the conventional wisdom by mounting an alternative interpretation using both qualitative and quantitative data from africa this article argues that

union suppression and certification success over the past decade a number of provinces have abandoned the long standing canadian tradition of automatic certification of unions based on card signing and instead opted for mandatory representation voting this trend however has developed with little understanding of the effectiveness of management opposition within a voting regime in this paper the impact of union suppression on union organizing success within the voting regime of british columbia is examined we find that union suppression tactics were highly effective with estimates rivalling those found in the united states moreover results from instrumental variable models suggest that ols estimates may seriously underestimate the true impact of suppression effort de suppression du syndicat et succes dans le processus de certification au cours de la derniere decennie un certain nombre de provinces canadiennes ont abandonne la pratique traditionnelle de certification automatique des syndicats sur la base des signatures de cartes d adhesion au syndicat et ont choisi de reclamer un scrutin pour determiner le support des membres potentiels on ne comprend pas bien l efficacite de l action d opposition des patrons au syndicat dans ce regime de scrutin ce memoire examine l impact des efforts de suppression des syndicats sur les succes des syndicats dans leurs efforts d organisation dans le cadre du regime de scrutin en colombie britannique on decouvre que ces tactiques ont ete tres efficaces tout autant qu aux etats unis de plus les resultats obtenus a l aide de modeles de variables instrumentales montrent que ceux qu on obtient a l aide de la methode des moindres carres ordinaires peuvent sous evaluer l impact des tactiques de suppression de maniere significative

certification delay under elections and card check procedures empirical evidence from canada this paper examines the determinants and consequences of delay in the union certification process using data from certification applications and unfair labor practice complaints ulps from british columbia 1986 98 and ontario 1993 98 during the period studied there were several changes in delay related laws including laws regulating the presence and stringency of election time limits and the availability of expedited ulp hearings key findings are that ulps against the employer reduced the likelihood of compliance with time limit laws except where expedited ulp hearings also existed employer filed objections to the application reduced the likelihood of compliance and election delay reduced the likelihood of certification success both in policy regimes without time limits and in those where stipulated time limits were frequently breached overall the results suggest that enforced time limits on elections coupled with expedited ulp hearings may substantially mitigate the adverse effects of election delay on certification success

water for life the impact of the privatization of water services on child mortality while most countries are committed to increasing access to safe water and thereby reducing child mortality there is little consensus on how to actually improve water services one important proposal under discussion is whether to privatize water provision in the 1990s argentina embarked on one of the largest privatization campaigns in the world including the privatization of local water companies covering approximately 30 percent of the country s municipalities using the variation in ownership of water provision across time and space generated by the privatization process we find that child mortality fell 8 percent in the areas that privatized their water services and that the effect was largest 26 percent in the poorest areas we check the robustness of these estimates using cause specific mortality while privatization is associated with significant reductions in deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases it is uncorrelated with deaths from causes unrelated to water conditions

games of perfect information predatory pricing and the chain store paradox the thesis of this paper is that finite noncooperative games possessing both complete and perfect information ought to be treated like one player decision problems that is players ought to assign at every move subjective probabilities to every subsequent choice in the game and ought to make decisions via backward induction this view is in contrast with the gametheoretic approach of nash equilibrium after expanding on this view for games in the abstract in sections 2 and 3 attention is turned in section 4 to an example due to reinhard selten called the chain store paradox which possesses the flavor of a situation involving a predatory pricing monopolist it is argued that for the chain store game the decision analytic approach leads under certain assumptions to more realistic outcomes than the standard nash equilibrium approach

the new economics of labor migration this paper reviews selected theoretical and empirical developments in the field of labor migration economics the migration behavior of individuals differs in accordance with their perceived relative deprivation those who are relatively more deprived tend to have stronger incentive to migrate than those who are relatively less deprived moreover a reference group characterized by more income inequality is likely to generate more relative deprivation highly skilled workers are also more likely to migrate migration decisions are often made jointly by the migrant and nonmigrant with a contractual arrangement regarding the sharing of costs and returns the exchange of commitments to share income provides coinsurance of particular interest are the determinants of the speed of adoption of migration as an innovation and the characteristics associated with the delay in the adoption of innovation new econometric techniques including techniques for the analysis of qualitative dependent variables techniques that correct for sample selection bias and those for the analysis of longitudinal data have substantially benefited empirical research in this area new methods that can correct for the biased estimate of the wages particular individuals would receive at 2 or more locations at the same point in time allow researchers to test locational decsion making models estimates of these structural models of labor migration support the hypothesis that individuals respond to income incentives in making the decsion to migrate further research is needed on the pazzling observation that migrant workers earn less than native born workers with similar characteristics during the 1st few years after migration but more thereafter other topics that need further research include the macroeconomic effects of migration the microeconomic and macroeconomic relationships between aging and labor migration and the migration behavior of dual earner families

an experimental investigation of rating market regulation abstract we introduce a simple game theoretical model that captures the main aspects of the repeated interaction between an issuer and a credit rating agency it involves up front payments of issuer fees and direct publication of requested ratings due to pecuniary injuries for untruthful ratings the credit rating agency should always report truthfully in the subgame perfect equilibrium knowing this the issuer should never request a rating conducting laboratory experiments we find that behavior significantly deviates from the equilibrium prediction in favor of a cooperative solution issuers frequently do request ratings which is often reciprocated with untruthful good ratings

ratings shopping and asset complexity a theory of ratings inflation abstract many identify inflated credit ratings as one contributor to the recent financial market turmoil we develop an equilibrium model of the market for ratings and use it to examine possible origins of and cures for ratings inflation in the model asset issuers can shop for ratings observe multiple ratings and disclose only the most favorable before auctioning their assets when assets are simple agencies ratings are similar and the incentive to ratings shop is low when assets are sufficiently complex ratings differ enough that an incentive to shop emerges thus an increase in the complexity of recently issued securities could create a systematic bias in disclosed ratings despite the fact that each ratings agency produces an unbiased estimate of the asset s true quality increasing competition among agencies would only worsen this problem switching to an investor initiated ratings system alleviates the bias but could collapse the market for information

halving poverty by doubling aid is there reason for optimism this paper criticises the world bank as overly optimistic with respect to its ability to fine tune development aid and to focus it on countries with good policies rather than on countries with poor policies in order to raise its effectiveness it is shown that recipient regions showed very different patterns of aid inflows and economic growth in the past and that aid flows yielded the highest correlation to growth when their magnitudes shrank it is furthermore argued that categorising countries by quality of domestic policies is not only questionable at a given point of time especially in countries with failing governmental institutions and open borders as in many african countries it suffers also from incentive problems so that countries receiving more aid can become victims of changes in their domestic policies which are more permissive and etatist to the disadvantage of private agents the paper instead pleads for a shift to aid policies decoupled from country specifics and more oriented to fundamental beyond border problems of the well being of the poor an international endowment fund under supranational law should finance research and implementation of research findings related to common international goods as it was suggested by sachs concerning aids and tropical disease research

the eyes of the needles a sequential model of union organizing drives 1999 2004 this paper models three stages of the union organizing drive using a new dataset covering more than 22 000 drives that took place between 1999 and 2004 the correlated sequential model tracks drives through all of their potential stages holding an election winning an election and reaching first contracts only one seventh of organizing drives that filed an election petition with the nlrb managed to reach a first contract within a year of certification the model which controls for the endogeneity of unfair labor practice ulp charges finds that a ulp charge was associated with a 0 smaller cumulative chance of reaching such a contract ulp charges had less effect on the votes cast than on the decision to hold an election and the ability to reach a first contract a sequential model such as this one could be extended to test between some competing theories about the determinants of union organizing

determinants of the outcomes of union certification elections this study analyzes determinants of union election outcomes at the level of the work unit within a theoretical framework of utility maximization voting behavior is modeled as a function of the social psychology of groups the economic and sociopolitical environment nlrb procedures and the extent of union organization of the industry utilizing nlrb certification election records for 1979 the author finds a negative relationship between unit size and union victories in units of fewer than 65 workers but no relationship in larger units also negatively related to union victories are delays between petition and election dates elections held in southern states having right to work laws and elections involving the teamsters in contrast workers are more likely to vote for representation as unemployment levels and the proportion of consent elections rise and as the rate of unionization in their industry rises to 35 percent

the role of union strategies in nlrb certification elections analyzing 1986 87 data from 261 nlrb certification election campaigns the author finds that union tactic variables explain more of the variance in election outcomes than any other group of variabl