It is widely agreed that unionization affects the rules and procedures governing the employment relation in organized establishments. The effect of these changes on establishment productivity, however, is unclear. This issue is examined using establishment level data from the U. S. cement industry. A positive union effect on the order of 6–8 percent is found in both cross-section and time series data. Although some caution is in order in interpreting the results, the evidence suggests that unionization can lead to productive changes in the operation of the enterprise.

This paper examines the impact of unionization on profit- ability, growth and productivity using time series data on over 900 product line businesses in the North American manufacturing sector (predominantly U.S.). The first section of the paper develops a simple theoretical framework for studying the effect of the union on firm performance. A key result of this analysis is that information about union wage and productivity effects is not sufficient to permit prediction of the sign (or magnitude) of consequent changes in the rate of return on capital; one must know the parameters of production and demand. Expanding the model to allow for the effects of market structure and alternative bargaining regimes establishes the need to examine several indicators of firm performance in assessing the impact of the union. The empirical analysis reveals sizeable negative union effects on profitability, but growth, productivity and the capital-labor ratio appear to be little affected by unionization in this data. The data are thus consistent with a model of union-firm interaction in which collective bargaining affects the distribution of profits, but leaves real magnitudes unchanged. The evidence suggests, however, that unionization may have longer term implications for efficiency since the impact on profitability appears to fall most heavily on firms with relatively little market power.

This paper examines the relative importance of timing and persistence elements in explaining cyclical fluctuations in labour supply. Data from the natural experiment provided by World War II and cross-sectional data on American local labour markets, as well as aggregate time-series data are used in the empirical work. We find little evidence that timing effects play an important role in labour market dynamics. The evidence suggests that views emphasizing persistence are more accurate, and that previous employment tends to raise the probability of subsequent employment.

This paper investigates the magnitude of the elasticity of demand for labor in time series data using more general and complete models of demand than have been previously employed. It argues that previous analyses have imposed two invalid constraints in calculations, which bias downward estimated elasticities. The first invalid constraint is the assumption that real capital prices have an equal opposite effect to real wages in the demand equation. We show on measurement error grounds that this constraint should not be imposed in econometric work even when longrun homogeneity of prices correctly characterizes the market. The constraint is rejected in the data. The second invalid constraint is that all explanatory variables have the same lag distribution. We argue that this constraint is invalid when decisions are made under uncertainty and find that it is also rejected by the data. The principal positive empirical finding is that with the constraints relaxed, the elasticity, of demand with respect to real wages is much larger than the estimates in the literature, indicating much greater price responsiveness on the demand side of the labor market than has previously been thought.