Unions, Productivity, and Productivity Growth

An important recent development has been the emergence o f a body o f literature by Harva rd economists emphasizing a collective voice/insti tutional response (CV/IR) view of unionism, t Possibly the most controversial aspect o f this literature (hereafter, the Harva rd studies) concerns the effects o f unions on labor productivity. Utilizing a product ion function approach, Brown and Medof f (1978), Clark (1980a, 1980b), and Allen (forthcoming), among others, find that unions increase labor productivity even after accounting for the microeconomic responses o f firms to union wage premiums. While the collective voice view of unionism has not gone unchallenged, there is relatively little empirical evidence that seriously questions these results. 2