Since 2000, US real average wages stagnated or declined while Canadian wages increased. We investigate the role of the Canadian resource boom in explaining this difference. We focus on wage spillovers to nonresource workers through a bargaining channel. We find that long-distance commuting to resource regions had substantial spillover effects on noncommuters in sending regions. Through spillovers, we account for 49% of the increase in the real mean wage in Canada between 2000 and 2012. We also find long-distance commuting effects in the United States. We conclude that long-distance commuting integrates regions, spreading benefits and costs of booms across the economy.

In this paper we provide new estimates of the impact of unions on nonunion wage setting. We allow the presence of unions to affect nonunion wages both through the typically discussed channel of nonunion firms emulating union wages in order to fend off the threat of unionisation and through a bargaining channel in which nonunion workers use the presence of union jobs as part of their outside option. We specify these channels in a search and bargaining model that includes union formation and, in our most complete model, the possibility of nonunion firm responses to the threat of unionisation. Our results indicate an important role played by union wage spillovers in lowering wages over the 1980-2010 period. We find de-unionisation can account for 38% of the decline in the mean hourly wage between 1980 and 2010, with two-thirds of that effect being due to spillovers. Both the traditional threat and bargaining channels are operational, with the bargaining channel being more important.