Are unions good for productivity?

This paper presents a critical view of the thesis, associated with Harvard analysts, that unions ‘cause’ higher productivity. It is argued that the research results of this controversial literature are to be regarded with considerable skepticism, not least because of the limited empirical and theoretical content of the underlying model. I am indebted to Andy Barnett for his helpful comments on this paper. The usual disclaimer attaches.     

Rent-seeking for a public good with additive contributions

We analyze rent-seeking for a public good with two groups, where the provision of a public good is decided in the all-pay contest where “the winner takes all”. We assume that the valuation of the public good varies across groups, but is the same for all members within a group. Free-riding in such situation was predicted by Baik et al. (J Public Econ 82(3):415–429, 2001). We describe a continuum of equilibria where all players make contributions. There is room for substantial payoff asymmetry, which ranges from equal payoffs to all group members to a zero payoff for the player who makes a contribution and positive payoffs for free-riders. The results generalize for the case where the prize has both a private and a public component.     

Serving the public good

This discussion foregrounds four key issues engaged by the articles presented in this special issue: the unique challenges and opportunities of environmental education evaluation, how to think well about the evaluation approaches and purposes that best match this domain, evaluation capacity building in environmental education and action, and accountability and activist pressures on contemporary evaluation. Environmental education evaluators are encouraged to consider positioning their work in service of the public good.     

Recent trends in public support for unions in Canada

This paper investigates trends in public support for unionism during the 1980s. Comparing data from two western Canadian cities in 1981 and 1987, we examine the impact of the recession of the early 1980s on public perceptions of the role of unions, whether the differences between cities documented during 1981 had increased or decreased by 1987, and if “hard times” had resulted in more nonunion employees expressing a willingness to join a union. There is little evidence of growing support for negative “big labor” opinions about unions in the two cities. Despite a well-publicized labor dispute involving the use of strikebreakers in one city, there was no increase in support for legislation restricting the practice. Residents in the same city, however, were significantly more likely to agree with “business unionism” sentiments, an opinion trend accompanied by a growing willingness to join a union. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Western Association of Sociology & Anthropology, February 1988, Edmonton. We thank the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta and Dr. Raymond Currie, Department of Sociology, University of Manitoba, for making available results of the 1981 and 1987 Edmonton and Winnipeg Area Studies. We also acknowledge the research assistance provided by Alan Law and Mary Thompson, and the word processing done by Linda Abbott.     

How unions affect management decisions: Evidence from public schools

This paper explores empirically the formal mechanism by which unions can influence management decisions on resource allocation and, thus, affect productivity. Instead of using a dummy variable to capture all union effects, contracts are broken down into various provisions to test whether they constrain management decisions. Analysis of data from New York school districts reveals that the number of provisions as well as specific provisions included in a contract significantly affect internal budgetary allocations.     

American trade unions and public approval: Can unions please all of the people all of the time?

Public opinion about labor unions has long been viewed as an important determinant of industrial relations outcomes. Yet, analyses of changes in union popularity over time have been largely qualitative and have focused on the impact of short-term idiosyncratic events. This paper provides a quantitative analysis of the determinants of American public approval of unions from 1936 to 1991. Hypotheses relating to the union wage advantage, strike activity, the national unemployment rate, and World War II, receive the strongest support. The implications of these results for organized labor and future research on attitudes toward unions are discussed.     

Public employee unions and the privatization of “public” services

Public sector unions are strongly opposed to contracting with the private sector for the production of goods and services. Economic theory indicates that because of incentives the private sector should be much more efficient that the public sector — a proposition verified for numerous activities of state and local governments. This paper examines evidence at the federal level to show that substantial cost savings can be achieved by contracting out in that sector as well.     

”Is public sociology such a good idea?”

Michael Burawoy’s call for a public sociology disciplined by professional and policy sociology, on the one side, and driven by critical sociology, on the other, exposes the ideological biases of sociology to publics. In so doing, public sociology will thwart non-ideological efforts for sociology to exert influence on broader publics and on political decision-makers. In order for sociology to be able to influence public opinion and the decisions of key players in the political and economic arenas, it will need to earn respect through a long evolutionary process of careful research and explanation without ideological fervor. To expose the ideological biases of sociology will thwart this evolutionary process. In contrast, sociology would be much better to develop an engineering mentality in addressing issues, problems, and concerns of publics in present-day societies.     

Equilibrium in abstract political economies: with an application to a public good economy with voting

Consider an abstract political economy which has a collective choice rule together with strategic interactions among players. We prove that there exists an equilibrium in such an economy by synthesizing an equilibrium existence theorem in generalized games by Shafer and Sonnenschein (1975) and a voting core existence theorem in simple games by Schofield (1984, 1989). The theorem can be applied to a public good economy where public good provisions are determined by a class of voting rule.Thanks are due to David Austen-Smith, Jeffrey Banks, Marcus Berliant, Steve Ching, Ryo-Ichi Nagahisa, Mary Beth Savio, Norman Schofield, and Tomoichi Shinotsuka. Detailed comments from an anonymous referee of the journal are gratefully acknowledged. Errors are, of course, my own.     

Compensation,employment, and the political activity of public employee unions

It has been hypothesized that because public employee unions are politically influential, they have a bargaining advanatage over their private-sector counterparts. Previous studies, however, have not directly measured the political activities of public employee unions and have instead usually used some type of unionization proxy. This paper uses unpublished data from the International City Managers Association to develop a more direct measure of union political activity. Using this measure, it is found that an increase in union political activity leads to higher compensation and employment for public employee union members.     

Production as social change: Policy sociology as a public good

ABSTRACT

Burawoy described two ways sociology can aid the public, through: (1) instrumental (policy) sociology and (2) reflexive (public) sociology. This article elaborates the different assumptions of how social change occurs according to policy and public sociology (and how sociology effects social change). Policy sociology assumes social change occurs through the scientific elaboration of the best means to achieve goals. However, policy sociology largely takes the public as an object of power rather than subjects who can utilize scientific knowledge. Public sociology assumes that social change occurs through the exposure of contradictions in goals, which elaborates better goals. However, the elaboration of contradictions assumes that there is a fundamental thesis/antithesis in society. If there are multiple goals/theses, public sociology fails in at least three ways. Policy sociology, when reflexively selecting its public, provides the best way sociology can aid the public.     

Social cohesion in Rwanda: Results from a public good experiment

We describe a public good experiment, a type of economic experiment commonly used to examine feelings of prosociality—that is, behaviour which is positive, helpful and intended to promote social acceptance and friendship—and community cohesion, carried out in Rwanda. Contributions in different parts of the country are affected by the local intensity of the 1994 genocide, with more generous contributions being made in areas where violence was greater. This supports earlier research indicating that conflict experience leads to greater prosociality. However, we also find that people who have not, themselves, been targets of violence give lower contributions than people who have. The considerable group‐related and regional differences in social behaviour may have implications for the country's policies to deal with social cohesion.     

Punishment,inequality, and welfare: a public good experiment

This paper reports the results of an experiment that investigates the two-sided relationship between punishment and welfare. First, it contributes to the literature on the behavioral determinants of punishment by examining the role of relative income and income comparisons as a determinant of punishment in a two-stage public good game when inequality arises endogenously from the subjects’ behavior. Second, this paper investigates the impact of punishment on both absolute and relative incomes. We compare three treatments of our game. The Unequal Cost treatment replicates Fehr and Gächter (2000)’s experiment under a stranger matching protocol. The Equal Cost treatment is identical to the previous one except that the ratio between the cost of one punishment point to the punisher and its cost to the target equals one. The third treatment is similar to the second one except that a partner matching protocol is implemented in order to isolate strategic motives for punishment. Our results indicate that subjects punish even when they cannot alter the current distribution of payoffs. We also find that in all treatments, the intensity of punishment increases in the level of inter-individual inequality. Finally, despite its cost, punishment progressively improves welfare in association with a decrease in the aggregate level of inequality over time.     

Expectation formation in step-level public good games

This article focuses on the process of expectation formation. Specifically, the question is addressed whether individuals think strategically when they form beliefs about other players'behavior. Most belief learning models assume that people abstract from strategic considerations. Using an incentive-compatible mechanism, experimental data are obtained on subjects'expectations in a step-level public good game and in a game against nature. Beliefs in the interactive games develop in the same way as in the game against nature, providing evidence that strategic considerations do not play a role. The evidence is consistent with predictions derived from the naive Bayesian model.     

Axiomatization of ratio equilibria in public good economies

Using consistency properties, we characterize the cost-sharing scheme arising from the ratio equilibrium concept for economies with public goods. The characterization turns out to be surprisingly simple and direct. In contrast to most axiomatic characterizations based on reduced games and consistency properties, our characterization requires that in the reduced game, the players take as given the proportions of the costs paid by the members of the complementary player set, rather than their utility levels. Received: 4 July 1996/Accepted: 28 March 2001