TY - JOUR
T1 - Economic impacts of new unionization on private sector employers
T2 - 1984-2001
AU - Dinardo, John
AU - Lee David, S.
N1 - Funding Information:
* A version of this paper with more exhaustive reporting of our results is available as DiNardo and Lee [2004]. Matthew Butler and Francisco Martorell provided outstanding research assistance. We would like to thank David Card, Robert J. LaLonde, Lawrence Katz, Enrico Moretti, Morris Kleiner, and Kenneth Chay for helpful discussions and Henry Farber for providing election data. We also thank seminar participants at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and the NBER Labor Economics Summer Institute, and the University of Michigan Labor Workshop, Princeton University, and the University of California at Berkeley, for comments on an earlier paper. We also thank Andrew Hildreth, Thomas Kochan, and Ritchie Milby, and the Institute for Labor and Employment, and the Hellman Family Faculty Fund for research support. The research in this paper was conducted while one of the authors was a Census Bureau research associate at the Berkeley California Census Research Data Center. Research results and conclusions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily indicate concurrence by the Bureau of the Census, National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, or the Institute for Labor and Employment. The results in this paper have been screened to ensure that no confidential data are revealed.
PY - 2004/11
Y1 - 2004/11
N2 - Economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large, representative data on establishments with union status information. Estimates are also confounded by selection bias, because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more likely to grow and pay higher wages. Using multiple establishment-level data sets that represent establishments that faced organizing drives in the United States during 1984-1999, this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of unionization on business survival, employment, output, productivity, and wages. Essentially, outcomes for employers where unions barely won the election (e.g., by one vote) are compared with those where the unions barely lost. The analysis finds small impacts on all outcomes that we examine; estimates for wages are close to zero. The evidence suggests that - at least in recent decades - the legal mandate that requires the employer to bargain with a certified union has had little economic impact on employers, because unions have been somewhat unsuccessful at securing significant wage gains.
AB - Economic impacts of unionization on employers are difficult to estimate in the absence of large, representative data on establishments with union status information. Estimates are also confounded by selection bias, because unions could organize at highly profitable enterprises that are more likely to grow and pay higher wages. Using multiple establishment-level data sets that represent establishments that faced organizing drives in the United States during 1984-1999, this paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of unionization on business survival, employment, output, productivity, and wages. Essentially, outcomes for employers where unions barely won the election (e.g., by one vote) are compared with those where the unions barely lost. The analysis finds small impacts on all outcomes that we examine; estimates for wages are close to zero. The evidence suggests that - at least in recent decades - the legal mandate that requires the employer to bargain with a certified union has had little economic impact on employers, because unions have been somewhat unsuccessful at securing significant wage gains.
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U2 - 10.1162/0033553042476189
DO - 10.1162/0033553042476189
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:10444235739
SN - 0033-5533
VL - 119
SP - 1383
EP - 1441
JO - Quarterly Journal of Economics
JF - Quarterly Journal of Economics
IS - 4
ER -