If unions appropriate quasi-rents from relation-specific capital, observed factor prices no longer reflect effective costs. Unionism has effects akin to a partial factor tax on capital. Demand curve settlements need not imply higher K/L among union firms. JEL code: J51 (Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects) *Helpful suggestions were received from John Chilton, Eric Maskin, and Joe S...

This study outlines behavioral hypotheses drawn from actual decision-making processes. It is based on in-depth interviews with decision-makers in manufacturing enterprises in a small, relatively conservative and stable Latin American country (Uruguay) and on detailed questionnaires given to members of those firms as well as to economic agents in government, the service sector, and labor unions ...

Much of what we know about strikes is grounded in the context of postwar Fordism, a unique historical moment of relatively institutionalized labor-management relations. Yet the resurgence of corporate resistance over the past quarter century, coupled with an increasingly hostile political and economic climate, has fundamentally transformed the American industrial landscape. Drawing from this re...

This paper analyzes changes in labor relations, legislation pertaining to work-related diseases and accidents, and the impact on workers' health in Argentina (1989-1995). The data indicate an increase in unemployment, underemployment, self-employment, and new hiring practices. The study shows the mechanisms by which the state has delegated responsibility for prevention of work-related risks to ...

The 1940s were a decade of sharp contraction in wage inequality, particularly at the top of the distribution. We study this narrowing using a new dataset on the compensation of top executives. Relative to average earnings, median executive pay declined 0.34 log points from 1940 to 1949. We find that government regulation—including explicit salary restrictions and taxation—had, at best, a modest...

This paper examines the effectiveness of recent New Zealand legislation in addressing issues of workplace disputes, with a particular focus on the role of unions. One of the most crucial aspects of the Employment Relations Act, introduced by the new Labour government in 2000, was its provision for mediation services to employers and employees. This initiative was explicitly intended to provide ...

Assume that there is no quasi-measurable cardinal not greater than 2. We show that for a c.c.c. σ-ideal I with a Borel base of subsets of an uncountable Polish space, if A is a point-finite family of subsets from I then there is a subfamily of A whose union is completely nonmeasurable i.e. its intersection with every nonsmall Borel set does not belong to the σ-field generated by Borel sets and ...

Some institutions die. Some keep being reborn. What will happen to unions? The question is an important one. It is also a tough one. Economists (and others) have a hard time understanding why countries have di®erent institutions, let alone predicting how these institutions are likely to change. We heard plenty of examples at this conference of how di±cult the task is. Nevertheless, with the hel...

The union of every point-finite, completely measurable family of Loeb nullsets is itself a Loeb nullset, provided the nonstandard model satisfies a simple set-theoretic condition. One application of this result is that every Loeb measurable function into a metric space has a lifting.

Let D be a set of n pairwise disjoint unit disks in the plane. We describe how to build a data structure for D so that for any point set P containing exactly one point from each disk, we can quickly find the onion decomposition (convex layers) of P . Our data structure can be built in O(n log n) expected time and has linear size. Given P , we can find its onion decomposition in O(n log k) time,...