uma aplicacao de modelos tar para o mercado de carne de frango no brasil cointegration has been the most used technique in analyzing commodities market integration this paper discusses the use of cointegration as a mean of directly testing market integration it was pointed out the main limitations especially in relation to its adequability to the principals of the economic theory an application for the national

the union impact on profits in the supermarket industry a number of studies have found that unions lower profits but controversy continues over whether the union impact is or is not greater in more concentrated markets this empincal controversy is linked to two underlying issues whether unions distort capital investment decisions and the total volume of monopoly profits in the u s economy research on the supermarket industry reveals that unions lower profits substantially in this sector and that indeed their impact is greater when local markets are more concentrated recently there has been an explosion of research concerning the union impact on profits and the associated question of whether or not unions reduce profits more in noncompetitive than competitive sectors for a review of studies see voos and mishel 1986 this has become an important empirical issue for a variety of reasons one concern has been whether unions distort capital investment decisions insofar as unions merely capture monopoly rents as opposed to reducing the rate of return in competitive industries the presumption is that unions create less distortion a separate issue has been whether or not previous research has underestimated the extent of total monopoly rents in the u s economy this would occur if observed profits are less than total profits in noncompetitive sectors because in those sectors a portion of monopoly rents is being redistributed to unionized employees while most studies find that unions lower profits there is some controversy regarding whether or not unions reduce profits more in industries with less competitive market structures freeman 1983 and karier 1985 both find that unions have a much larger effect in concentrated industries however hirsch and connolly 1985 question that conclusion and clark 1984 reports contrary evidence with regard to market share all previous investigations of this issue utilize manufacturing inter industry data cross sections of predominantly manufacturing firms or 2 digit sic manufacturing industry observations disaggregated by state this paper reports the results of research designed to ascertain whether unions reduce profits in one relatively homogeneous nonmanufacturing industry supermarkets and if their impact is larger when local markets are more concentrated lamm 1982 and marion et al 1979a and 1979b have explored the impact of unions and of concentration respectively on food prices moreover excellent data on supermarket profits exist the data give our study several unique qualities because observations are on firms in specific geographic markets in a single disaggregate industry any estimated union profit effect cannot be said to result from a correlation between unionism and unobserved industry specific factors the study is also the first to be based on evidence from the nonmanufacturing sector the data utilized and the model estimated the data on which this research was based were gathered under subpoena by the joint economic comreceived for publication july 8 1985 revision accepted for publication october 17 1985 university of wisconsin and industrial union department afl cio respectively special thanks to frederick geithman for many helpful suggestions and for research assistance and to bruce marion for making the data available to us and for commenting on our results all opinions as well as errors are the authors own funds for a portion of this research came from the university of wisconsin graduate school during a portion of this research mishel was affiliated with cornell university

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

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

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

chasing after good jobs do they exist and does it matter if they do most people believe that there are such things as good jobs jobs that a worker would consider herself lucky to get but for economists the existence of good jobs is debatable in this paper i provide a definition of a good job based on various theories of the labour market a job that involves a surplus captured partly by the worker i use that definition to guide an empirical investigation of the existence and importance of good jobs i conclude that good jobs do exist that the labour market does not just function according to a roy model with wage differentials reflecting only skill differentials compensating differentials or bond posting and that their impact on the overall wage structure is substantial finally i discuss the implications of the existence of good jobs for policy setting and for assessments of the justice of a society resume la chasse aux bons emplois est ce qu ils existent et est ce que cela importe qu ils existent la plupart des gens croient qu il y a telles choses que de bons emplois des emplois qu un travailleur se trouverait chanceux d avoir mais pour les economistes l existence de bons emplois est discutable dans ce texte l auteur propose une definition de bon emploi fondee sur diverses theories du marche du travail un emploi qui engendre un surplus capture en partie par le travailleur il utilise cette definition pour guider son enquete empirique sur l existence et l importance de bons emplois on conclut que les bons emplois existent que le marche du travail ne fonctionne pas seulement selon le modele de roy avec des differentiels de salaires qui refletent seulement les differentiels d habiletes les differentiels compensatoires ou le depot d une caution et que leur impact sur la structure globale des salaires est substantielle finalement l auteur discute les implications de l existence de bons emplois sur la definition de politiques et sur l evaluation du caractere juste d une societe

the intertemporal stability of the concentration margins relationship using a longitudinal data base we find that there has been a substantial narrowing of the spread between the price cost margins of concentrated and unconcentrated industries including measures of macroeconomic fluctuations into standard price cost margin regressions we find significant differences in cyclical behavior across market structure we also explore a possible explanation unionization for differences in cyclical behavior finally we investigate the degree to which our results are affected by the potential simultaneity of concentration advertising and the price cost margin

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

wage and employment determination in a unionized industry the iwa and the british columbia wood products industry two non nested models of union wage and employment determination are estimated using data on the international woodworkers of america iwa and the british columbia wood products industry one model predicts wage and employment outcomes on the labordemand function while the other predicts efficient outcomes on the contract curve the models provide empirical estimates of the union s preferences the production technology and the comparative statics of the models an attempt is made to choose the true model for this industry unfortunately non nested hypothesis tests and other criteria for model discrimination cannot reject one model in favor of the other

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

efficient bargains and the mcdonald solow conjecture this article explores the mcdonald and solow 1981 conjecture that the outcome from a bargain over wages and employment can be approximately achieved by a bargain over wages and the labor capital ratio the crew size where the latter can be argued to be more representative of the real world i derive a crew size contract curve and show that this conjecture is not generally true a test to determine which model is generating real world data is suggested the wage rigidity results derived by mcdonald and solow for their contract curve do not apply to this crew size contract curve

union rent seeking intangible capital and market value of the firm abstract this study considers the effect of unions on intangi ble capital investment and profitability within the context of a market value rather than a more traditional accounting based approach theory is provided suggesting unions are able to affect profitability by sharing in the economic returns to firm specific intangible capital in support of this hypothesis we find unionization reduces the returns to r d and produces a corresponding limiting influence on r d investment at the firm level i introduction a n extensive literature in economics has ex amined the determinants of profitability with much of the focus centering on the role of market structure only recently however have the effects of labor unions on profitability been analyzed ths is surprising since labor economists long have emphasized union influences on wages and productivity that in turn may affect profitabil ity in recent studies freeman 1983 and karier 1985 report a significant limiting influence of unions on price cost margins in high concentra tion manufacturing industries using firm level data and the market based tobin s

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

bargaining power fear of disagreement and wage settlements theory and evidence from u s industry the paper develops and estimates a theoretical model of wage determination and union nonunion wage differentials in order to overcome the institutional ctiticisms of the formal bargaining literature the paper generalizes the nash zeuthen harsanyi model by linking the solution to the institutional concepts of bargaining power and fear or cost of disagreement and by making the outcome depend not only on endogenous but also on exogenous factors an operational specification of bargaining power and fear of disagreement allows the model to be estimated with data covering twelve companies and trade unions during the period from mid 1950 s to the late 1970 s while giving limited support to the nashzeuthen harsanyi solution the empirical analysis indicates that the bargaining outcome usually deviates from the nash zeuthen harsanyi point and in accordance with the institutionalist claim that it varies significantly with exogenous factors contrary to the traditional labor economics view the results do not support the general conclusion that the bargaining solution lies on the marginal revenue product curve of labor instead the relevant coefficients suggest that for many firms and unions the outcome might be better characterized by the efficient contract vertical contract curve

product aggregation market integration and relationships between prices an application to world salmon markets relationships between prices of goods offer motives of interest in at least two areas market integration and product aggregation there is a close relationship between market integration and aggregation which may increase the usefulness of market integration studies in this article these relationships are developed and illustrated by an application to the world salmon market it is shown that the law of one price holds for an international market with five salmon species this result has significant implications for the world salmon market regarding both product aggregation in demand analyses and international trade policy

a note on union non union benefit differentials and size of establishment abstract this research note has expanded podgursky s 1986 results concerning union non union differentials to benefits explicitly union impacts on pension and health insurance coverage are obtained by plant size our empirical results are based on may 1983 cps data of random sample of white males they indicate that the pattern of differentials for health insurance are very similar to those obtained by podgursky i e the union non union differentials are largest in small plants however the results for pension coverage indicate a u shaped union non union differential i e the smallest and largest plants are found to have the largest differential

union nonunion compensation differentials across plant sizes evidence from cps 1983 previous empirical work on the relationship between plant size and union nonunion differentials has focused either on wages podgursky 1986 or benefits bramley wunnava and robinson 1989 freeman 1981 this note extends this research by simultaneously focusing on both wages and benefits there are several arguments that can be made in explaining union nonunion differentials across plant sizes 1 union threat effects 2 efficiency wage effects and 3 wage dispersion effects our study focuses on measuring the union nonunion differential in total compensation for this end estimates of total compensation are obtained using mellow s suggestion 1982 for combining hourly wage information with qualitative data on pensions and health insurance and ross s imputations 1989 for holidays and vacations benefits our results based on the may 1983 cps supplemented by bls data on pensions health insurance holidays and vacation benefits indicate significant union nonunion total compensation differentials exist only for workers in establishments with less than 500 workers these results are consistent with podgursky s wage differential findings

modelling trends in food market integration method and an application to tanzanian maize markets abstract pushed by increasing availability of price data and extensive market liberalisation efforts in many developing countries research on food market integration has evolved rapidly over the last two decades empirical methods to measure market integration diverged in two directions on the one hand there is the parity bounds model pbm using a switching regressions technique while on the other hand the use of threshold autoregressive tar models has been proposed this article provides a discussion on the two methods and argues that tar models are better able to capture the dynamics of the arbitrage process underlying interconnected markets furthermore we extend the standard tar model to include a time trend in both the threshold and the adjustment parameter using weekly maize price data on seven selected markets in tanzania we illustrate how both transaction cost and the speed of adjustment have changed during the nineties

substitution between production labor and other inputs in unionized and non unionized manufacturing the ease of substitution between labor and other factors of production is an important determinant of the elasticity of demand for labor and thus of the economic effects of unionism all else the same the greater the elasticity of substitution the greater is the elasticity of derived demand and the greater the displacement of labor for a given union induced wage increase in sectors where this elasticity is large unions are likely to be relatively weak and able to win only slight wage gains freeman and medoff 1981 and forthcoming or if they win large gains will have to pay a high price in terms of lost jobs in the sectors where the elasticity is small unions may be able to extract a substantial wage premium at little cost in terms of employment moreover as a simple general equilibrium model indicates the elasticity of substitution between labor and other factors in the unionized sector is a key parameter in determining the impact of the iiunion wage effect on the earnings of nonunion workers and on the efficiency of the economy johnson and mieskowski 1970 despite the importance of the elasticity of labor demand for an analysis of unionism little attention has been given to the absolute and relative magnitude of this elasticity under collective bargaining while there is some discussion of technological change and the substitution of capital and nonproduction workers for organized production workers in the institutional literature e g slichter 1941 slichter healy and livernash 1960 bok and dunlop 1970 modern econometric work provides no estimates of the relevant parameters as a result johnson and mieskowski 1970 rees 1963 lewis 1964 and others have been forced to evaluate union effects with guesstimates of the elasticities of concern in union settings this paper attempts to fill some of the gap in our knowledge by providing estimates for u s manufacturing of the constant output elasticity of demand for unionized and nonunionized production workers and of the elasticity of substitution between these workers and other inputs the analysis concentrates on what we call the relative inelasticity hypothesis which states that the demand for production workers will be more inelastic in the presence of a union for two reasons the likelihood that unions have organized and survived in sectors with low elasticities and the effects of various contract provisions on the ability of management to substitute other factors for production labor the study is divided into four sections section i develops the rationale for the relative inelasticity hypothesis and describes the nature of the empirical analysis conducted to test its validity the second section uses a 1972 state by 2 digit standard industrial classification sic industry data file for manufacturing to estimate the elasticity of substitution between production labor and both nonproduction labor and capital in the union and nonunion sectors of u s manufacturing industries section iii provides estimates based on a 1968 72 sample of manufacturing establishments of the elasticity of substitution between production and nonproduction labor the only two inputs for which information is available the final section briefly summarizes the findings and discusses their implications for understanding the impact of trade unionism on the u s economy to preview the ensuing discussion our main conclusion is substitution between production labor and other inputs is generally lower in union received for publication march 6 1978 revision accepted for publication august 17 1981 both authors are with harvard university and the national bureau of economic research supported by u s department of labor grant no j 9 m 6 0094 national science foundation grant no apt77 16279 and the national bureau of economic research under its program of research on labor economics we are especially grateful to jane mather for her invaluable assistance on this project and to greg bialecki charles brown gary chamberlain kathy coons jon fay martin van denburgh and lori wilson for their significant contributions the study has not been reviewed by the board of directors of the national bureau

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

transfer costs spatial arbitrage and testing for food market integration conventional tests for food market integration ask often misleadingly whether prices in different locations move together in this paper an alternative methodology the parity bounds model pbm is developed which uses information on transfer costs in addition to food prices to assess the efficiency of spatial arbitrage monte carlo experiments using data generated by a point space spatial price equilibrium model show the pbm to be statistically reliable an application to philippine rice markets demonstrates that the pbm detects efficient arbitrage when other tests do not

unionism in a competitive industry this article explores a model in which a union confronts many competitive workers firms and consumers under monopoly unionism union coverage may be incomplete then union wages and employment are insensitive to product demand variation under efficient unionism coverage can never be incomplete some union variables necessarily vary with product demand preliminary evidence on the demand independence under incomplete coverage hypothesis is presented also more structure is imposed and further hypotheses are derived and the manner in which the model can be enriched to allow for a variety of union related issues within a consistent framework is set out

do unions capture monopoly profits this paper challenges the conclusion reached in recent studies that unions reduce profits exclusively in highly concentrated industries from their review of previous studies and their analysis of 1977 data on 367 fortune 500 firms the authors conclude that there is no convincing evidence that concentration produces monopoly profits for unions to capture moreover they find that the union wage effect is not greater in concentrated industries as suggested by the hypothesis that unions capture concentration related profits evidence is found suggesting that a firm s market share its expenditures on research and development and its protection from foreign competition provide more likely sources for union rents than does industry concentration several recent studies have found that unions reduce profits significantly and some have concluded that this profit reduction is restricted to highly concentrated industries both conclusions are important the finding that unions reduce profitability indicates that in general the cost increasing effects of unions outweigh any positive productivity effects they may bring to the workplace such a

compensation unionization and deregulation in the motor carrier industry abstract previous research on the deregulation of the motor carrier industry has concluded that firms have become more efficient under deregulation and that costs have fallen largely at the expense of labor most studies that examine the effects on labor use current population survey data and find that wage premiums to union labor have fallen as a result of deregulation this study uses firm data and finds that deregulation had a very small effect on the average compensation paid by surviving union firms for nonunion firms the impact of deregulation is much larger these results suggest that the compensation premium for the labor of surviving union firms has increased but this increase applies only to surviving union labor in the paper we also point to and note a major exodus of union firms with the result that union labor levels have fallen and fallen dramatically