This paper reviews changes occurring in the U.S. industrial relations system at the workplace, in collective bargaining, and at the level of strategic decision making within business and labor organizations. By relating these current developments to longer term pressures on the post New Deal industrial relations system, we suggest that the system is undergoing fundamental transformation. To ada...

The aim of this study is to analyse differences and similarities in industrial relations systems in nine sectors across the European member states to identify the prospects of the European Sectoral Social Dialogue (ESSD). Industrial relations in Europe are characterised by increasing diversity within national systems and by functional convergence between them. Increased diversification is cause...

We experimentally test how acceptance thresholds react to the decision of the proposer in a three party ultimatum game to exclude one of two responders with veto power from the game. We elicit responder acceptance thresholds in case the proposer decides to exclude one of them, what increases the available pie, and in case he doesn’t exclude him despite strong monetary incentives. We find that o...

This paper utilizes survey data on labor union coverage at the firm level to examine union-nonunion differences in investment activity among 706 U.S. companies during the 1970s. Consistent with a model of union rent seeking, firm-level collective bargaining is associated with significantly lower physical capital and R&D investment, even following extensive control for firm and industry characte...

Union representation is in strong decline in most industrialized countries. What drives this decline? We contribute to answering this question by developing and implementing a detailed decomposition approach based on Fairlie (2005). Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey for 2001 and 2006, we document a sharp drop in collective bargaining coverage that ...

We analyze sequential bargaining in general political and economic environments, where proposers are recognized according to a random recognition rule and a proposal is implemented if it passes under an arbitrary voting rule. We prove existence of stationary equilibria, upper hemicontinuity of equilibrium proposals in structural and preference parameters, and core equivalence under certain cond...

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN in recent years about the need for unions and managements in the United States to move beyond traditional collective bargaining and begin working together cooperatively to establish creative new programs which will increase productivity and improve the quality of working life. In this context, many authors have criticized union leaders for being hostile toward cooperative ...

German Works Councils and Productivity: First Evidence from a Nonparametric Test This paper presents the first nonparametric test whether German works councils go hand in hand with higher labor productivity or not. It distinguishes between establishments that are covered by collective bargaining or not. Results from a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for first order stochastic dominance tend to indicate...

What are the causal effects of collective bargaining (CB) on teacher salaries? This seemingly simple question is difficult to answer because (a) national data measuring school district salaries and collective bargaining is limited in scope, while individual teacher data from the CPS mismeasure CB coverage; (b) union wage effects depend not only on coverage but also on an array of CB law provisi...