Empirical models of local government unionization reveal substantial reductions in union membership due to right-to-work laws. Free riders, rather than underlying antiunion sentiments, are probably responsible because the unionization models include better measures of sentiments than right-to-work laws. Furthermore, these laws reduce the probability that bargaining unions form by more than they reduce the probability that nonbargaining associations form in three of five local government functions. These results also confirm the importance of free riders because union security clauses that prohibit free riders in states without right-to-work laws exist only in collective-bargaining contracts.

Using unique panel data on production lines in U.S. minimills, we analyze the adoption of problem‐solving teams and group incentive pay and their effects on productivity. Almost every line ultimately adopts group incentives. However, problem‐solving teams are found almost exclusively in lines with more complex production processes. Consistent with these patterns, fixed‐effects models reveal increased productivity under group incentives in all lines, while teams raise productivity in lines with more complex production processes. This evidence indicates that teams give workers a valuable opportunity to solve problems in more complex production processes, while standard operating procedures appear to suffice elsewhere.

This article demonstrates that state collective bargaining laws are important determinants of union and nonunion public employee compensation. State laws that provide stronger bargaining rights and ensure closure to the bargaining process increase the direct effect of police unions on compensation. Moreover, indirect threat effects on the pay of nonunion police also increase with stronger bargaining laws. In each law category investigated, nonunion police receive most of the compensation premium enjoyed by unionized police. Previous studies that have not adequately controlled for these effects of bargaining laws have therefore underestimated the full effect of public-sector unions on compensation.

Griliches’ 1994 presidential address considers the limited success economists had in trying to account for the productivity slowdown of the 1970’s and 1980’s, and “urges us toward the task of observation and measurement.” In the 1990’s, the high rates of productivity growth emphasized the need for new models of productivity, this time turning to estimating organization-level determinants of productivity focusing on businesses’ use of new computerbased information technologies (IT), and new methods of work organization (Timothy Bresnahan et al., 2002). In this paper, we take up the charge to develop new data and new methods for modeling the productivity of organizations. We summarize three methods for assembling data for an “insider econometrics” study of the productivity of organizations, and we illustrate one method that we refer to as “informed survey analysis.”

The authors investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of thirty-six homogeneous steel production lines owned by seventeen companies. The productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices, which include incentive pay, teams, flexible job assignments, employment security, and training, achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach, which includes narrow job definitions, strict work rules, and hourly pay with close supervision. Their results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices. Copyright 1997 by American Economic Association.

We investigate the productivity effects of innovative employment practices using data from a sample of 36 homogeneous steel production lines owned by 17 companies. The productivity regressions demonstrate that lines using a set of innovative work practices, which include incentive pay, teams, flexible job assignments, employment security, and training, achieve substantially higher levels of productivity than do lines with the more traditional approach, which includes narrow job definitions, strict work rules, and hourly pay with close supervision. Our results are consistent with recent theoretical models which stress the importance of complementarities among work practices.