The Microeconomic Impacts of Employee Representatives: Evidence from Membership Thresholds

Employee representatives in firms are a potentially key but not yet studied source of the impact of unions and works councils. Their actions can shape multiple drivers of firm performance, including collective bargaining, strikes, and training. This article examines the impact of union representative mandates by exploiting legal membership thresholds present in many countries. In the case of Portugal, which we examine here, while firms employing up to forty‐nine union members are required to have one union representative; this increases to two (three) union reps for firms with fifty to ninety‐nine (100–199) union members. Drawing on matched employer–employee data on the unionized sector and regression discontinuity methods, we find that a one percentage point increase in the legal union representative/members ratio leads to an increase in firm performance of at least 7 percent. This result generally holds across multiple dimensions of firm performance and appears to be driven by increased training. However, we find no effects of union representatives on firm‐level wages, given the predominance of sectoral collective bargaining.     

The Impact of Homeowners' Housing Wealth Misestimation on Consumption and Saving Decisions

Using a unique data set of 81,943 house value estimates by the homeowners and their financial institution, I find that homeowners overestimate their house value by 3.1%. After controlling for homeowners' socioeconomic characteristics, I find that ex ante homeowners who rate (cash-out) refinance an existing loan to increase savings (consumption) are significantly more likely to underestimate (overestimate) their house value. Moreover, overestimators (underestimators) are more likely to increase (reduce) their spending ex post . Finally, I also find that underestimators are more likely to prepay their loans and overestimators are more likely to default on their loans.     

The Theory and Evidence on Real Estate Financial Decisions: A Review of the Issues

There has developed a growing body of literature, both theoretically and empirically based, on real estate financial decisions. Despite these advances, there are a number of important issues that remain unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review and analysis of where research on real estate financial decisions has been, where it stands today, and where it is likely to be headed in the future. Some of the unresolved issues in real estate investment analysis are also discussed. The hope is that this review will provide the stimulus for solving some of these complex issues.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Housing Decisions of Older Homeowners

This paper examines the effects of finanacial, demographic and housing variables on older homeowners' propensity to make a variety of housing changes. Pooled cross-sectional data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is used in a multinomial logit framework. The results indicate that demographic factors are much more important than financial factors in explaining housing changes by older homeowners.     

Modeling and Computing Transactions Costs for Purchasers of Housing Services

This paper models, as equilibrium behavior, buyers' behaviors under transactions costs and market failure constraints. It derives equilibrium conditions and it shows how they differ from unconstrained models. Standard utility and cost parameters are then used to estimate the economic costs of the constraints, which may be interpreted, at the margin, as the transactions costs of moving. If transactions costs are greater than the economic costs of the constraints, the household remains in a residence, even in response to changed price and income expectations. Changes in expected prices and incomes lead to changed housing demand even when the household cannot adjust housing consumption between periods. These findings have implications for empirical work with both cross-section and panel data sets.     

Housing Quality and the Structure Tax: Evidence from Microdata

In a previous study [13] I showed theoretically that housing quality will rise when the structure tax rate falls if capital is a noninferior input. This result was supported empirically with aggregate SMSA-level data. The present study reports empirical confirmation with microdata more appropriate for the theoretical hypothesis.     

Multidimensionality and Renegotiation: Evidence from Transport-Sector Public-Private-Partnership Transactions in Latin America

Multidimensional auctions are a natural, practical solution when governments pursue more than one objective in their public-private-partnership transactions. However, multi-criteria auctions seem difficult to implement and vulnerable to corruption and opportunistic behavior of both parties involved. Using data from road and railway concessions in Latin America, the paper examines the probability of renegotiation in connection with the selected award criteria. It shows that auctioneers tend to adopt the multidimensional format when the need for social considerations, such as alleviation of unemployment, is high. But more renegotiations would likely happen when the multidimensional format is used. Good governance, particularly regulatory quality and anti-corruption policies, can mitigate the renegotiation problem.     

House Price Appreciation, Transactions and Structural Change in the British Housing Market: A Macroeconomic Perspective

This paper constitutes the first of two interrelated studies and is concerned with the relationship between house prices and transactions. Using aggregate time–series data, we find a strong relationship in Britain between the two variables, but the relationship changed during the 1990s. Transactions became much lower. We suggest that structural changes in macroeconomic relationships are increasingly likely to occur in a world of greater inequality and our results are one symptom. We argue that macroeconomic estimation needs to be complemented by careful microeconomic analysis. The second study, also appearing in this issue, therefore examines the microeconomic aspects of the issue.     

Changing network pictures: Evidence from mergers and acquisitions

A merger or acquisition may cause dramatic changes in a business network, which in turn affect managerial cognition as well as managerial activities. We use the concepts of ‘network pictures’ and ‘networking’ to illustrate and analyse changes in managerial sense-making and networking activities following a merger or acquisition. The paper focuses on acquiring, acquired or merging parties and those companies with which they have direct customer relationships. Based on three case studies comprising seven acquisitions and one merger, we show that following a merger or acquisition managers may need to adapt their previous network pictures in a radical way; these adaptations are, however, not always realized as shifts in network pictures and adjustments in networking activities by all the managers involved. Whereas the merging parties' network pictures and networking activities are largely driven by their perception of customers' needs and developments, it is not certain that the merger or acquisition is enacted accordingly. The paper contributes to a clearer view on the conceptual interdependence of the constructs of network pictures and networking in multi-actor situations and thus it develops a network perspective on mergers and acquisitions.     

Estimating Bargaining Effects in Hedonic Models: Evidence from the Housing Market

Bargaining is common in markets for heterogeneous goods and differences in bargaining power between buyer and seller affect the negotiated transaction price. Previous research has found systematic evidence in the housing markets that weak buyers pay higher prices and weak sellers receive lower prices for their homes. Earlier work has modeled the bargaining effect as a parallel shift in the hedonic function, implicitly assuming that attribute shadow prices were unaffected by the bargaining process. In this paper, we use a sample of home sales where the seller's bargaining power is weakened by the fact that the home is vacant at the time of sale to test whether the effect of bargaining is best captured by a shift in the hedonic constant or whether the attribute shadow prices vary as well. The question is significant for property valuation where estimation of the marginal value of an attribute is commonly used to adjust comparable sales data. We find strong confirmation that bargaining power influences the negotiated price. We also find evidence that bargaining power alters attribute prices, although we do not find a consistent pattern across markets.     

Tax Limits and Housing Markets: Some Evidence at the State Level

Property tax limitations, as well as other tax and expenditure restrictions on state and local governments in the United States, date back to the late 19th century. A surge in property tax limitation legislation occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and its effects on government revenue, school financing and educational quality have been studied extensively. However, there is surprisingly little literature on how property tax limits affect housing markets. For the first time, we examine the impacts of property tax limitations on housing growth, in addition to their impacts on housing prices. Using state‐level data over 23 years, we find that property tax limits increase housing prices (indexes) by approximately 2%. Property tax limits appear to have little impact on the growth in the housing stock, but education spending limits reduce the number of building permits by over 6%. Our indirect evidence suggests that the number of housing units may grow when property tax limits are accompanied by increases in other own‐source revenues to state government.     

The Impact of Enterprise Size on Employment Tribunal Incidence and Outcomes: Evidence from Britain

Employment Tribunals are the formal means of adjudicating disputes over individual employment rights in the UK. This article hypothesizes that, because small firms favour informality over formality, they are more likely (i) to experience employee claims than large firms; (ii) to be subject to different types of claims; (iii) to settle prior to reaching a formal Tribunal; and (iv) to lose at a Tribunal. Data from the 2003 Survey of Employment Tribunal Applications are used to examine these hypotheses. They are generally supported, although in relation to the third there was no size effect. Furthermore, our results show that firms that have procedures and follow them are more likely to win than those firms that do not have any procedures. Recognizing the benefits of informality, while also ensuring that small firms follow proper standards of procedural fairness, is a policy dilemma that has yet to be resolved.     

The Long-Run Relationship between House Prices and Income: Evidence from Local Housing Markets

Many in the housing literature argue that house prices and income are cointegrated. I show that the data do not support this view. Standard tests using 27 years of national-level data do not find evidence of cointegration. However, standard tests for cointegration have low power, especially in small samples. I use panel-data tests for cointegration that are more powerful than their time-series counterparts to test for cointegration in a panel of 95 metro areas over 23 years. Using a bootstrap approach to allow for cross-correlations in city-level house-price shocks, I show that even these more powerful tests do not reject the hypothesis of no cointegration. Thus the error-correction specification for house prices and income commonly found in the literature may be inappropriate.     

Worker Participation and Firm Performance: Evidence from Germany and Britain

The Freeman–Lazear works council/worker involvement model is assessed over two distinct industrial relations regimes. In non-union British establishments our measures of employee involvement are associated with improved economic performance, whereas for unionized plants negative results are detected. The suggestion is that local distributive bargaining can cause the wrong level of worker involvement to be chosen. Also consistent with the model is our finding that mandatory works councils do not impair, and may even improve, the performance of larger German establishments. Yet smaller plants with works councils under-perform, illustrating the problem of tailoring mandates to fit heterogeneous populations.     

Changes in REIT Liquidity 1990–1994: Evidence from Intra-day Transactions

This study uses data on intra-day transactions to analyze whether real estate investment (REIT) liquidity as measured by the bid-ask spread changed from 1990 to 1994, a period during which the industry's market capitalization increased from $8.7 billion to $45 billion. REIT percentage spreads (spread as percentage of share price) narrowed significantly, primarily attributable to higher share prices rather than narrower dollar-value spreads. An empirical model is used to analyze the determinants of percentage spreads. Return variance and share price, not market capitalization are found to be the primary determinants of percentage spreads in both periods. This suggests that the liquidity of REIT securities is similar to that of non-REIT securities with similar prices and return variance. In addition, percentage spreads are wider for REITs trading on the NASDAQ.     

Cross-Generation Correlations of Union Status for Young People in Britain

This paper investigates whether young people whose fathers are union members are themselves more likely to join a union. We find that young people with unionized fathers are twice as likely to be unionized as those with non‐union fathers; this rises to three times higher for those whose fathers are active in the union. This supports the idea that socialization within the family plays a role in encouraging union membership. It is not the case that the cross‐generation correlations we observe are driven by common within‐family characteristics (like occupation, industry and political persuasion) that are strongly related to union membership.     

High Leverage and Willingness to Pay: Evidence from the Residential Housing Market

I document a strong correlation between paying the full listing price on homes and borrowing 100% loan‐to‐value. Homebuyers who do both overpay by 2.8% to 3.9% ($4,800 to $6,700) and are 22.7% more likely to have their properties foreclosed within one year. The correlation is not mechanical: there is a discontinuity in the average leverage around the full listing price. The correlation is stronger in areas with a high fraction of financially constrained and unsophisticated residents, and in areas of high past price growth (potentially indicative of buyer optimism).     

The Influence of Stock Market Listing on Human Resource Management: Evidence for France and Britain

We use data from the Relations Professionnelles et Négociations d'Entreprise survey of 2004 and the Workplace Employment Relations Survey of 2004 to analyse how far approaches to human resource management differ according to whether an establishment is part of a company with a stock exchange listing. In both countries we find that listing is positively associated with teamworking and performance‐related pay, while in France, but not in Britain, it is also linked to worker autonomy and training. Our findings are inconsistent with the claim that shareholder pressure operates as a constraint on the adoption of high‐performance workplace practices. The pattern is similar in the two countries, but with a slightly stronger tendency for listing to be associated with high‐performance workplace practices in France.