Does union membership reduce gender earnings differentials? Evidence from employer–employee matched data in China

This paper examines whether union membership reduces gender earnings differentials in the Chinese labour market using an employer–employee matched data set. We have three main findings. First, union membership helps reduce the gender differentials in hourly wage and monthly allowance, but not in monthly basic wage and yearly bonus. Second, ensuring that female workers receive overtime pay is one way by which union membership helps reduce the gender earnings differentials. Third, controlling for firm fixed effects reduces the effect of union membership on the gender gap in hourly wage and monthly allowance, which means that the unobserved firm characteristics might impact the effect of union membership on gender earnings differentials.     

Norm-Based Trade Union Membership: Evidence for Germany

Abstract. In the absence of closed shops and discriminatory wage policies, union membership can be explained by the existence of social norms. We describe a model, incorporating institutional features of the German labour market, which explicitly allows for social custom effects in the determination of union membership. Using panel data for Germany, we find evidence for according effects which restrict free‐riding. The impact of social norms tends to increase with net union density. Hence, observed reductions in the demand for union membership can weaken the impact of a norm and accentuate the free‐rider problem.     

A Theoretical Analysis of Trade Union Membership Fees, Bargaining Power, Wage Rate and Unemployment

The positive effect of membership fees on trade unions' cohesion and commitment and the adverse effect of these fees on trade unions' density imply that the effects of membership fees on trade unions' bargaining power, wage rate and unemployment can be depicted by inverted U-shaped curves whose upper bounds are reached when membership fees are set at half the ratio of the upper-bound on members' level of satisfaction from the trade union services to their disposable income rate. The implications of these effects for membership fees are analysed for a trade union that sets its membership fee so as to minimise the loss stemming from missing wage rate and unemployment targets.     

Union decline in Britain: does gender have anything to do with it?

The paper examines if workplace gender diversity offers some explanation for the decline of unions in Britain. Using the WERS2004 linked employer–employee data and alternative econometric estimators it reports an inverse relationship between workplace union density and gender diversity. Gender and ownership status based sub‐group analyses suggest the inverse relationship to be stronger for male union members and those in the private sector. Gender group size‐based analysis reveals a positive link between workplace union density and gender diversity in workplaces with a female majority. The findings in this paper may mean that unions may need to embrace the changing workplace demography genuinely to improve their fate.     

Monetary and Financial Integration in the EMU: Push or Pull?

This paper examines the channels through which monetary union increased financial integration, using panel data on bilateral international commercial bank claims from 1998–2006. I decompose the increase in claims into three channels: a "borrower effect," as a country's EMU membership may leave its borrowers more creditworthy in the eyes of foreign lenders; a "creditor effect," as membership in a monetary union may increase the attractiveness of a nation's commercial banks as intermediaries, perhaps through increased scale economies or through an improved regulatory environment after the advent of monetary union; and a "pairwise effect," as joint membership in a monetary union increases the quality of intermediation between borrowers and creditors when both are in the union. Isolating these three channels through a series of difference-in-differences specifications, I find that the pairwise effect is the primary source of increased financial integration. This result is robust to a number of sensitivity exercises.     

Some evidence on the membership hysteresis hypothesis in Europe

In a democratic model of union wage-setting, monopoly unions can induce hysteresis in the behavior of employment, at least locally. As a result, autoregressive representations of employment and membership should contain a unit root even if the determinants of labor demand are stationary. In addition, the model predicts that employment should Granger-cause consumption wages. These implications are tested with data from several European countries. Although there is little conclusive evidence that employment hysteresis constitutes the key difference between the European and US experiences, trade union membership data from the Federal Republic of Germany provides strong support for the membership hysteresis hypothesis in this country.     

Union Wage Effects and the Probability of Union Membership*

This paper uses Lee's (1978) model to determine the wage gains associated with trade union membership and the reasons individuals join trade unions in Australia The data are derived from the 1984 Australian National Social Science Survey. A major conclusion is that unions secure a 17.22 per cent wage gain for their members, other things the same. This expected wage premium is shown to have an important positive impact upon the union membership decision. The welfare loss associated with the union wage premium is argued to be relatively minor about one half of one per cent of gross domestic product     

农民工加入工会的会费问题

采用VNM效用函数对农民工加入工会的会费问题进行了研究,得出农民工意愿的会费水平与侵权概率及被侵权的工资份额正相关的结论,并指出这一会费水平使工会实现了利润最大化却对农民工没有任何助益。工会是一种非盈利的公共组织,其会费水平的确定应遵循公平会费原则。公平会费使工会的期望利润为零,而农民工的福利却得到了最大化的增进。由于不同行业具有不同的公平会费,所以在实行统一的会费水平的情况下,应逐步建立起不同行业工会之间的转移支付制度,同时政府也应对侵权问题严重的行业给予更多关注和资金支持,以利于这些行业顺利组建工会及开展维权工作。     

Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing

Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across firms, with the largest differences found in low-union-density cigar firms where indirect costs (that is, uncertainty and risk) accrued in particular to women workers. The lack of gender differences in mutual aid membership indicates that women were not hard to organize but avoided organizations associated with greater risk for employer retaliation and uncertain returns according to a cost–benefit analysis.     

A survival analysis approach to the duration of union membership in Italy

Thanks to direct access to union databases, this article applies survival analysis to a sample of 47?637 Italian workers trying to explain the determinants of the duration of union membership. The results show that union membership duration is a positive, though declining, function of age. Furthermore, women, flexible workers, foreign ones and those working in cities tend to show less attachment to union membership than other workers. The estimated median duration is about 6 years. Positive hazard duration dependence is also found. Unobserved heterogeneity is detected but it does not significantly affect model estimates.     

State dependence,serial correlation and heterogeneity in the union membership dynamics

In order to distinguish the true and spurious state dependence from the complicated dynamics of union membership, the simulation estimators incorporating the lagged dependent variables, unobserved individual heterogeneity and correlations among the errors are implemented in this article to study union membership dynamics. It is found that the true state dependence of union membership under multivariate t assumption is much higher than the standard dynamic panel probit estimators which are under multivariate normal assumptions. On the other hand, the spurious state dependence (the variance of the unobserved individual heterogeneity) is estimated to be higher when using the standard dynamic panel probit estimators than under multivariate t assumption. Moreover, blacks and married men are found to have higher union membership true state dependence than whites and unmarried men.     

中国工会存在工资溢价吗* ——基于控制样本选择性偏差的Blinder Oaxaca回归分解

本文采用2008年中国社会综合调查数据,运用工具变量的方法,研究了中国工会的工资溢价问题。研究结果表明,工会会员与非工会会员之间的小时工资差异主要是由禀赋效应造成的,系数效应和交叉效应并不明显。换句话说,工会工人的资源禀赋和工作特征禀赋等是造成工资差异的主要原因,工会对工资没有明显的直接影响。工会会员在入会倾向方面具有明显的群体特征。最后本文提出了加强工会有效性的两点建议。     

Teacher unions, teacher pay and student performance in India: A pupil fixed effects approach

This paper examines the relationship between teacher unionization, student achievement and teachers' pay using a cross-section of data from private schools in India. We use differences in student mark across subjects to identify within-pupil variation in achievement and find that union membership of the teacher is associated with reduced pupil achievement. We find no evidence this could be due to the unobservables not controlled for by this procedure. A school fixed effects equation of teacher pay shows that union membership raises pay and in this case too we find that remaining unobservables are unlikely to explain this outcome. We discuss the policy implications of the findings and show that the effectiveness of teacher credentials in improving teacher performance is linked to unionization.     

Workplace Characteristics and Their Effects on Wages: Australian Evidence

Using data, from the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, which match individual employees to the firms and workplaces at which they are employed, this paper examines the relative importance of both individual and workplace characteristics for wages. Results from the estimation of 'effects' models indicate that workplace-specific effects are important, explaining 39 per cent of the variation in individual log hourly wages. Estimation of a model including both individual-level and workplace-level variables (and using a random effects approach) identified workplace size, foreign ownership, the significance of export markets, the gender composition of the workforce, workplace union organisation, the incidence of shift work, and location as the most important workplace-level influences on wages.     

WHAT DETERMINES VACATION LEAVE? THE ROLE OF GENDER

Vacation leave is introduced in workplaces to improve the working environment. Surprisingly, it has been observed that a large number of workers do not use all of their entitled vacation days. This paper provides a novel set of facts about the gender differences in taking vacation time using the Canadian Workplace Employee Survey, which is a linked longitudinal employer‐employee dataset. The results show considerable differences between men and women in the estimated effects of some demographic characteristics after controlling for job and workplace characteristics. However, they reveal significant implications of work arrangements (e.g., part‐time work, flexible work schedules, and home‐based work), job promotion, supervisory tasks, and union membership for vacation use, for both men and women. This paper provides further insights on the use of fringe benefits that may be useful to policymakers and businesses.     

Income inequality and economic growth in an open economy

Income inequality has a strong impact on fiscal policy when majority voting enables those individuals with less-than-average income to decide on tax rates. This study analyzes the impact on economic growth of income inequality in an open economy where tax revenues are partially used for international transfers. In any case, income inequality is harmful for growth. In an economic union, positive effects of international integration raise the growth rate as long as net transfers do not grow proportionally. In a political union, unionwide voting makes distributive politics depending on the union's median voter. In this case, additional output growth on aggregate level is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for a majority of voters to accept union membership.     

Risk Aversion and Trade‐Union Membership*

If trade unions provide only their members with insurance against income variations, as a private good, this insurance will provide a stronger incentive for more risk‐averse employees to become union members. Using data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel (SOEP) and various direct measures of individual risk attitudes, we find robust evidence of a positive relationship between risk aversion and the likelihood of union membership for full‐time employees. This association is particularly strong for males and in West Germany.     

UNIONS AND EMPLOYMENT GROWTH IN BRITISH WORKPLACES DURING THE 1990S: A PANEL ANALYSIS

This paper uses the 1990–1998 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey Panel to analyse the impact of unions on employment growth among private sector workplaces in Britain. The growth rate among unionised workplaces was roughly 3–4% per annum lower than among non‐unionised workplaces, ceteris paribus. The effect is not accounted for by the age of unionised workplaces, union concentration in declining industries, or organisational or technical change at workplace level. The effect remains once we account for the impact of unions on workplace survival. However, effects are only apparent where unions do not negotiate over employment and where unions have some degree of bargaining strength.     

Union membership and employment dynamics

This note examines the behavior of a monopoly union that cares about its future membership and recognizes the dynamic dependence of membership on employment. A characterization is given both of the steady state and of the interdependent employment and membership dynamics out of that steady state.     

CURRENCY UNIONS, TRADE FLOWS AND CAPITAL FLOWS

Abstract.  Trade within currency unions is much larger than outside of currency unions, even after factoring in many relevant variables. The existing empirical evidence is based on reduced form models of trade, and therefore indicates correlation between but neither causality nor mechanism. This paper argues that the causal relationship runs from currency unions to trade, and then considers two possible mechanisms behind this: currency union membership: reduces trade resistance or reduces investment resistance. We argue that both mechanisms are required to explain the observed economic impact of currency union membership.