unions and family income inequality the effect of union wage gains of private sector blue collar workers on the size distribution of family incomes and the level of poverty in 1970 is examined in this paper collective bargaining wage gains are found to compress the distribution of income among union families when union and nonunion families are combined however the union impact on measured inequality is negligible due in part to the fact that on average middle income families reap the largest gains from collective bargaining the impact of union wage gains on the incidence of poverty also is very small

the impact on economic performance of a transformation in workplace relations this study examines how a transformation in patterns of conflict and cooperation affected economic performance in 25 work areas of a large unionized manufacturing facility in the period 1984 87 unlike most studies of industrial relations and economic performance this study clearly distinguishes conflict from cooperation but evaluates the two together rather than focusing on only one an analysis of data collected from union and employer records and interviews strongly suggests that work areas with traditional labor management relations rooted in adversarial assumptions had higher costs more scrap lower productivity and a lower return to direct labor hours worked than work areas with transformational relations characterized by increased cooperation and improved dispute resolution

union wage hours and earnings differentials in the construction industry full information maximum likelihood is used to estimate union wage hours and earnings markups construction union wage markups are positive 58 2 at the sample means since union hours markups are negative 4 0 for most demographic groups union earnings markups 51 1 are smaller than the wage markups all exogenous variables are allowed to interact with the endogenous union dummy variable which allows us to test whether markups vary across demographic groups whether increased local unionization has a positive spillover effect in the nonunion sector and whether increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in increased local unemployment equally affects wages and hours in the two sectors

the demise of the national union in italy lessons for comparative industrial relations theory using data collected during field research in italy on the reorganization of the auto industry the author analyzes recent changes in italian industrial relations based on this case study he argues for a new approach to comparative industrial relations research and theory instead of treating national systems as the basic unit of analysis and searching for macro institutional features as the key dimensions to use in constructing comparative typologies of industrial relations systems the author develops an approach focusing on micro level developments and the politics of strategic choice to explain variation within nations two factors appear to be crucial in explaining this variation local socioeconomic conditions that shape the strategies of unions and management in firms undergoing adjustment and the choices unions make in reallocating responsibilities between local and national structures

rich and powerful subjective power and welfare in russia abstract does empowerment come hand in hand with higher economic welfare in theory higher income is likely to raise both power and welfare but heterogeneity in other characteristics can either strengthen or weaken the relationship survey data on russian adults indicate that higher individual and household incomes raise both self rated power and economic welfare the individual income effect is primarily direct rather than through higher household income there are diminishing returns to income though income inequality emerges as only a minor factor reducing either aggregate power or welfare at given income the identified covariates have strikingly similar effects on power and economic welfare

union wages and union decline evidence from the construction industry two well documented empirical findings are that unionized employees typically receive substantially higher compensation than their non union counterparts and that union representation in the united states has declined over time some observers have hypothesized a causal link between these two phenomena the achievement of a union wage premium they argue hastened union decline both by reducing union firms economic competitiveness and by inducing employers to adopt various union avoidance strategies using data from the current population survey and the census bureau s census of construction the authors test this hypothesis for the construction industry even in estimations that allow for a lagged response and incorporate a variety of controls they find no evidence that high union nonunion wage ratios in construction in the 1970s or 1980s resulted in lower union membership in 2000

unionisation structures and innovation incentives this paper examines how dierent unionisation structures aect rms innovation incen tives and industry employment we distinguish three modes of unionisation with increasing degree of centralisation 1 decentralisation where wages are determined independently at the rm level 2 coordination where one industry union sets individual wages for all rms and 3 centralisation where an industry union sets a uniform wage rate for all rms while rms investment incentives are largest under centralisation investment in centives are non monotone in the degree of centralisation decentralisation carries higher investment incentives than coordination labour market policy can spur innovation by decentralising unionisation structures or through non discrimination rules

a methodology for measuring food poverty applied to kenya abstract this paper proposes a new way of establishing a food poverty line taking into account regional food preferences and prices it uses this poverty line to derive a food poverty measure which satisfies the desirable fundamental properties of such measures and has the additional advantage of being additively decomposable the measurement of food poverty is further generalized to heterogeneous groups of households facing different sets of relative prices and exhibiting different food preferences finally the above methodology is applied to the empirical estimation of food poverty among kenyan smallholders and the results contrasted with those obtained by two other methods

changes in the perception of the poverty line during the depression in russia 1993 96 economic transition in russia was accompanied by a precipitous decline in real income for most of the population this article analyzes how the decline affected people s perception of the minimum level of income needed to make ends meet individual level data collected from repeated surveys between march 1993 and september 1996 reveal that the elasticity of subjective minimum income with respect to actual median income was 1 5 or that people s subjective estimate of the minimum income for an adult russian fell about 1 7 percent each month this sharp reduction in the face of a decrease in real income meant that the percentage of the population who felt that they were poor declined even though poverty remained at a very high level more than 60 percent of the population throughout the period this self perception is in marked contrast to an objective measure of poverty the percentage of the population whose income was less than a given real poverty line rose

robustness of subjective welfare analysis in a poor developing country madagascar 2001 the authors analyze the subjective perceptions of poverty in madagascar in 2001 and their relationship to objective poverty indicators they base their analysis on survey responses to a series of subjective perception questions the authors extend the existing empirical methodology for estimating subjective poverty lines on the basis of categorical consumption adequacy questions based on this methodology they calculate the household specific subjective poverty lines and compare the poverty profiles derived from different subjective welfare questions the results show that the aggregate poverty measures derived from consumption adequacy questions accord quite well with the poverty measures based on objective poverty lines the subjective welfare analysis can be used in poor developing countries for evaluating socioeconomic and distributional impacts of various policy interventions

the fragmentation of the bargaining society wage setting in the nordic countries 1950 to 1992 it is commonly believed that corporatist bargaining institutions have been in general decline in the 1980s and 1990s the leading explanations of the purported universal trend toward greater decentralization of collective bargaining are the impact of technological change changes in the occupational structure and growing international economic integration decentralization should be particularly visible in the nordic countries because collective bargaining was more centralized in these countries in the 1960s and 1970s than in any others in western europe in this article the authors present data on the changes in the centralization of wage bargaining in the four nordic countries since 1950 they document that a significant decentralization of collective bargaining has occurred in sweden as is well known but not in the other three the article concludes with a review of possible explanations of swedish exceptionalism

good times bad times postwar labor s share of national income in capitalist democracies this article returns to a classic question of political economy the zero sum conflict between capital and labor over the division of the national income pie a detailed description of labor s shar

the day of the week effect the international evidence abstract we re examine the day of the week effect for eleven indexes from nine countries during the 1969 1992 period the standard methodology as well as the moving average methodology are used and we find returns to be lower at the beginning of the week but not necessarily on monday for the full period as in chang et al international evidence on the robustness of the day of the week effect journal of financial and quantitative analysis 28 1993 497 514 the anomaly disappears for the most recent period in the usa however the effect is still strong for european countries hong kong and toronto

measuring poverty using qualitative perceptions of consumption adequacy we show that subjective poverty lines can be derived using simple qualitative assessments of perceived consumption adequacy based on a household survey we implement the method using survey data for jamaica and nepal respondents were asked whether their consumptions of food housing and clothing were adequate for their family s needs the implied poverty lines are robust to alternative methods of dealing with other components of expenditure the aggregate poverty rates accord quite closely with those based on independent objective poverty lines however there are notable differences in the geographic and demographic poverty profiles

who wants to redistribute the tunnel effect in 1990s russia abstract support for governmental redistribution tended to be greater for the poor than the rich in a representative sample of russian adults in 1996 however support for redistribution is higher amongst those who expect their welfare to fall and this effect is strongest amongst the currently well off a rising trajectory inhibits demand for redistribution support is also stronger in rural areas amongst those with less schooling those who fear losing their job the elderly and amongst women our results are consistent with albert hirschman s idea of a tunnel effect whereby prospects of mobility in both directions influence demand for governmental redistribution

a re interpretation of pattern bargaining most recent studies investigating pattern bargaining have sought to establish its presence or absence by statistically comparing summary measures of wage levels or growth rates across and within industries the author of this study argues that a better measure of the existence of pattern bargaining over wages is the degree of similarity of collective bargaining contract clauses the usual focus of negotiators when they engage in pattern following using that criterion he analyzes uaw and iam collective bargaining agreements in the automobile aerospace and agricultural implement industries for the years 1970 95 he finds evidence that a strong wage pattern existed at both the inter and intra industry levels in the 1970s but that this pattern weakened in the 1980s among the major automobile industry bargaining pairs however a strong intra industry pattern returned in the late 1980s

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

enterprise unionism the japanese system at work trade unions japanese unions at work the japanese labour market has worked quite well over recent decades whereas the european economies have produced more and more unemployment a popular hypothesis is that this difference can be attributed to unions while in europe unions are strong and centralized and do not care about the individual firm the japanese unions are enterprise unions which deal directly with and understand the heal management employers in japan in turn consult unions and employees on all relevant management decisions this corporatism finally ensures that workers are more motivated and have a higher productivity it is the central conjecture of this paper that the presence of unions increases the voice of the employees significantly by using innovative new firm data it is shown that this is actually the case hence japanese enterprise unions are not harmful but foster information sharing and contribute to the performance of the enterprise toshiaki tachibanaki and tomohiko noda

macroeconomic performance and collective bargaining an international perspective this paper critically reviews the research on how collective bargaining systems influence macroeconomic performance in industrialized countries the review considers effects of bargaining level coordination and corporatist institutional arrangements key empirical results turn out to be quite fragile and much of the paper explores issues of measurement and specification that account for the fragility the paper concludes that complementarities between key institutions and between institutions and the economic environment may be more important for macroeconomic performance than the effects of individual institutions and it suggests research strategies

management whipsawing the staging of labor competition under globalization the authors examine management whipsawing practices in the european auto industry based on more than 200 interviews and a comparison of three automakers they identify four distinct ways in which managers stage competition between plants to extract labor concessions informal hegemonic coercive and rule based whipsawing practices at the three auto firms differed from one another and changed over time because of two factors structural whipsawing capacity and management labor relations strategy in the context of economic globalization whipsawing is an effective means for managers to extract concessions to loosen national institutional constraints and to diffuse employment practices internationally

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

self rated economic welfare in russia abstract most of those russian adults who feel that they are poor are not classified as such in the poverty statistics and most of those who are classified as poor don t feel that way we study the determinants of peoples perceptions of their economic welfare in an unusually rich socioeconomic survey while income is a highly significant predictor subjective economic welfare is influenced by many other factors including health education employment assets relative income in the area of residence and expectations about future welfare insights are obtained into how objective data should be weighted in assessing economic welfare

spanish unions institutional legacy and responsiveness to economic and industrial change using empirical data drawn from multiple sources including interview material the author examines spanish trade unions responses to the reorganization of spain s economy and changes in the struc

union effects on white collar compensation this paper uses two new data sources each of which combines information on worker and establishment characteristics with detailed information on the components of employee compensation to examine union nonunion pay differentials for white collar workers estimates reveal that nonunion wages and total compensation are more responsive than union pay levels to worker productivity differences such as education and work experience also large firms pay 10 to 15 percent more to their white collar employees than small firms in the nonunion sector but only 5 percent or less in the union sector overall the white collar union wage differential appears to be 3 5 to 4 0 percent rising to 7 1 percent when fringe benefits are included in the dependent variable significant spillovers to nonunion white collar workers which appear to erode the measured union nonunion pay differentials are also found

too poor to be green consumers a field experiment on revealed preferences for firewood in rural guatemala the paper reports on a field experiment that investigates whether households in guatemala are willing to surrender a small material gain in order to buy legal rather than illegal firewood given the ineffectiveness of command and control policies to curb the problem of illegal logging in guatemala the experiment assesses the potential viability of market oriented solutions local consumers in developing countries are generally believed to be too poor to pay a premium for green ethical products therefore little information has been gathered on willingness to pay wtp for such products and its determinants in non affluent consumer markets while our experiment on firewood consumption in central guatemala only implies a weak and indirect test of wtp for green products the results indicate that it is premature if not unwarranted to assume that the poor are not ready to make pro ethical choices in the marketplace moreover we find that information on the legal procedures for firewood extraction significantly affects consumer choice between legal and illegal firewood

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

public sector earnings and the extent of unionization many studies have examined the influence of union density union members as a percentage of all workers on earnings in the private sector but few such studies have looked at the public sector using data from the 1991 current population survey this study estimates the determinants of earnings for state and local government employees in both the union and nonunion sectors the extent of public sector unionization appears to be positively correlated with earnings for both state and local government workers and for those covered and not covered by collective agreements although the effect for non covered employees is smaller than that for covered employees both effects are larger than those typically found in similar estimates for the private sector the authors also find that bargaining structure has some influence on earnings with the most consistent effect being a positive influence of arbitration on the earnings of local government workers

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

is pattern bargaining dead this paper challenges the common belief that pattern bargaining largely ended in the 1980s applying a measure of pattern bargaining the dispersion of log wages to wage data drawn from the same data set that audrey freedman used in her widely quoted studies of this subject the author shows that the extent of pattern bargaining was actually greater in 1983 than in 1977 the evidence suggests that managers perceptions of changes in the bargaining process which are the basis for freedman s claim that pattern bargaining has eroded are inconsistent with actual changes in wage patterns

institutions and performance in european labour markets taking a fresh look at evidence this paper presents a selective survey of the recent literature on labour market institutions and offers new empirical eu based evidence on the impact of labour market reforms on employment and labour market adjustment although the literature traditionally treats labour market institutions as exogenous attention shifted recently towards understanding the underlying causes of specific institutional arrangements as a consequence the literature highlights the great importance of an efficient policy design exploiting these interactions wisely and identifies general principles for achieving an efficient policy design at both macro and micro levels although empirical evidence does not show a major change in terms of intensity of labour market reform after the setting of the economic and monetary union and the creation of the euro the reforms aiming at strengthening the labour market attachment of vulnerable groups tend to have been successful both in raising their employment and increasing labour market adjustment

how robust is a poverty profile comparison of poverty such as when poverty is greatest typically matter far more for policy choices than do aggregate measures of poverty such as how many people are deemed poor the authors examine alternative methods for constructing poverty profiles focusing on their internal consistency and appropriateness for guiding policy none is perfect but some methods appear to be preferable to others when the aim is to inform policies for fighting absolute consumption poverty a case study on indonesia reveals that the country s regional and sectoral poverty profile is highly sensitive to some aspects of measurement but quite robust to others

wage rule formation in the aerospace industry this study of wage bargaining in the aerospace industry focuses particularly on lump sum bonuses one time cash disbursements that generally accompany lower increases in the base wage than were formerly standard although such bonuses which appeared in aerospace companies before they appeared in other large manufacturing industries were viewed as a union concession they persisted into the 1989 bargaining round despite a sharp upturn in the fortunes of the most prominent aerospace company the author regards that fact as well as the weakening of both inter and intra industry pattern bargaining as support for the view that a significant shift in union wage determination occurred in the 1980s he argues however based on interviews with managers union officials and workers that consensus has not yet been achieved on the meaning of this shift

the decentralization of collective bargaining a literature review and comparative analysis the author reviews evidence that the bargaining structure is becoming more decentralized in sweden australia the former west germany italy the united kingdom and the united states although in

economic development and sectoral unions in china drawing on qualitative fieldwork in china s guangdong and zhejiang provinces the author asks how post socialist unions respond to worker unrest and why the development of sectoral level bargaining has been uneven in different regions of china while zhejiang has had relative success in establishing the organizational infrastructure for sectoral bargaining guangdong has had little success despite ongoing attempts by unions the author explains variation in sectoral level bargaining through an analysis of the different models of economic development which are characterized as local entrepreneurialism and global integration for zhejiang and guangdong respectively despite having different organizational forms unions in both places suffer from a lack of credibility and capacity to enforce contracts given the acftu s ongoing focus on sectoral level bargaining however experiments will likely continue in various regions and industries throughout china

canadian union nonunion wage differentials using extensive canadian longitudinal data from the years 1969 71 the authors estimate union nonunion wage differentials of 12 14 percent for 1969 and 13 16 percent for 1970 these estimates are not adjusted for selectivity because three different tests to identify selectivity yield no evidence of selectivity bias the authors argue that although testing for selectivity is often essential selectivity adjustments have resulted in greatly inflated estimates of union nonunion wage differentials in some studies and should therefore be used with caution

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

the week end effect in common stock returns the international evidence this paper examines the daily stock market returns for four foreign countries we find a so called week end effect in each country in addition the lowest mean returns for the japanese and australian stock markets occur on tuesday the remainder of the paper answers four questions are seasonal patterns in foreign stock markets independent of those previously reported in the u s do japan and australia exhibit a seasonal one day out of phase due to different time zones do settlement procedures across countries bias week end effects does the seasonal pattern in foreign exchange offset the week end effect in stocks for americans investing overseas some of the most anomalous empirical findings in finance are associated with the sample distributions of daily common stock returns cross 1 french 2 gibbons and hess 3 and keim and stambaugh 4 have documented that the average return on friday is abnormally high and the average return on monday is abnormally low to our knowledge this so called day of the week effect or week end effect has yet to be explained because this anomaly has been reported primarily for u s stock returns it is appropriate to investigate whether similar results occur for other countries positive findings would strongly support the proposition that the weekly seasonal effect is a general world wide phenomenon rather than the result of a special type of institutional arrangement in the u s to shed more light on this proposition our paper examines stock market returns in the u k japan canada and australia since we find a week end effect in each country we can examine a set of interesting questions for example are these seasonals independent of the previously reported seasonal in the u s due to different time zones do far eastern countries exhibit a seasonal one day out of phase do different settlement procedures across countries influence weekend effects does the seasonal in foreign exchange fluctuations see mcfarland pettit and sung 7 and levi 6 offset the week end effect in stock market returns for americans investing overseas

ten years of q squared implications for understanding and explaining poverty summary over the past decade there have been a number of initiatives to promote a more systematic integration of quantitative and qualitative or q squared approaches to poverty analysis in the global south and a large body of literature had emerged the objective of the article is to present a selective review of this empirical work with a view to demonstrate the value it has added for understanding and explaining poverty the evidence strongly suggests that q squared approaches have aided our understanding of the characteristics of the poor and the causes of poverty

is pattern bargaining dead a discussion in her article is pattern bargaining dead kathryn j ready suggests that pattern bargaining actually strengthened during the period 1977 83 a period commonly thought to mark a sharp decline in union bargaining power and settlements ready s conclusion that hourly wages were more similar across a sample of union firms in 1983 than in 1977 is used to suggest that perhaps unions are still able to enforce pattern bargaining and therefore that their bargaining power did not in fact collapse as is commonly assumed indeed if they are more able to enforce patterns perhaps their power has actually increased this conclusion bears closer scrutiny because it runs counter to a considerable body of evidence on contemporary collective bargaining pattern bargaining refers to relationships between sets of negotiations for example an agreement with one employer may form the basis for bargaining with other firms in the same industry or in some cases across industries unions and their bargaining power have generally

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

the determinants and extent of uaw pattern bargaining the author using two new data sets covering uaw contract outcomes in a wide range of industries estimates the degree to which the union s target settlement with a big three automaker was followed in subsequent settlements in the same bargaining round over the years 1955 79 and 1987 90 using several different specifications and examining both wage levels and percent wage increases he finds that target settlements had large statistically significant spillover effects in all years although the effects were considerably smaller in 1987 90 than in 1955 79 bargaining unit size and industry had important influences on pattern following in all years firm specific financial health indicators had little influence on pattern following in the earlier period but an important influence in 1987 90

day of the week effect in anomaly returns international evidence abstract this paper examines the day of the week effect in anomalies birru 2018 in 24 international equity markets in particular the returns to the quality minus junk qmj factor on different weekdays are studied the qmj factor resembles the difference between speculative and non speculative stocks in birru 2018 we find that qmj generates a positive negative premium on monday friday the qmj premium on monday is 2 89 times higher than its daily average our findings are consistent with the notion that investors are more optimistic pessimistic about the future prospect of speculative stocks on friday monday as such there is a stronger preference for non speculative speculative stocks on monday friday leading to the day of the week effect around the world

labor markets production strategies and wage bargaining institutions the swedish employer offensive in comparative perspective transformed patterns of labor market governance occupy a central place in the study of contemporary west european political economies here detailed analysis of the dramatic decentralization of wa

monetary union and wage bargaining institutions in the eu extrapolating from some member state experiences this article considers the question of how monetary union in the eu is likely to impact the preferences of governments employers and unions regarding the organization of wage bargaining european monetary union involves a decentralization of wage bargaining centered at the national level in relation to monetary policy centralized at the european level drawing on recent literature and on the experience of two member states italy and spain which prior to emu underwent periods of intense bargaining fragmentation the author argues that the imposition of restrictive monetary policy in a fragmented wage bargaining context in which workers nonetheless have substantial bargaining rights tends to have perverse effects these effects ultimately led governments and bargaining actors in italy and spain to seek a reorganization of bargaining that gave national actors greater control over wage setting the article considers to what extent a similar dynamic might play out in the euro zone