Economics of Trade Unions

Hristos Doucouliagos is Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, and the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Australia.Richard B. Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics at Harvard University. He directs the National Bureau of Economic Research/Science Engineering Workforce Projects and is Senior Research Fellow in Labour Markets at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance, UK.Patrice Laroche is Professor of Human Resource Management and Labor Relations at the ISAM-IAE Nancy (Université de Lorraine) and at the ESCP Europe Business School, France.

• Introduction: why study studies of unionism? Meta-analysis as arbiter in debates Structure of the book 1 A bibliometric analysis of What Do Unions Do? Freeman and Medoff’s research agenda Approach and data Analysis Summary 2 Research synthesis through meta-regression analysis The core challenge of inference Collecting and coding meta-data Effect size Meta-averages Multiple meta-regression analysis Summary 3 Unions and productivity: direct estimatesUnions and productivity levelsUnions and productivity in manufacturing industriesUnions and productivity in other industriesSummary4 Unions and productivity growthUnions and productivity growth: new data for an old issue Summary5 Unions and productivity: investment channelsUnions and physical capital investment Unions and investment in intangible capitalSummary6 Unions and productivity: employee behavior channelsUnions and employee turnoverUnions and job satisfactionUnions and organizational commitmentSummary7 Unions and financial performance of firmsUnions and profits Summary8 Summary and conclusionsFindings on union effectsMeasured and unmeasured artifacts in research of union effects Challenges for future research and policy

'...generally helpful scene-setting remarks anchor each chapter, and the authors are evenhanded throughout in their discussion of the literature.'John T. Addison, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, and Department of Economics and Finance, Durham University Business School (UK), and Research Fellow, IZA Bonn