Unionization, Industry Concentration, and Economic Growth

Colin Davis, Ken-ichi Hashimoto and Ken Tabata

ISER Discussion Paper from Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka

Abstract: This paper examines how unionization affects economic growth through its impact on industry concentration in a two-country model of international trade and endogenous productivity growth. Knowledge spillovers link firm-level productivity in innovation with geographic patterns of industry ensuring a faster rate of output when industry is relatively concentrated in the country with the greater labor supply. We show that stronger bargaining power in the relatively large country increases the rate of output growth when labor unions are employment-oriented, but decreases the rate of growth when unions are wage-oriented. We then calibrate the model using labor market data for the United States and the United Kingdom and study the effects of falling union bargaining power on industry location patterns, output growth, and national welfare.

Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-gro and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.iser.osaka-u.ac.jp/static/resources/docs/dp/2021/DP1154.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Unionization, industry concentration, and economic growth (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1154

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISER Discussion Paper from Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of Osaka Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Librarian ().