Unions, Tripartite Competition and Innovation

Alex Bryson and Harald Dale-Olsen
Additional contact information
Harald Dale-Olsen: Institute for Social Research

No 20-02, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: We present theoretical and empirical evidence challenging results from early studies that found unions were detrimental to workplace innovation. Under our theoretical model, which extends the Cournot duopoly innovation model, local union wage bargaining is more conducive to innovation - particularly product innovation - than competitive pay setting. We test the theory with workplace data for Britain and Norway. Results are consistent with the theory: local union bargaining is positively associated with product innovations in both countries. In Norway, local union bargaining is also positively associated with process innovation.

Keywords: product innovation; process innovation; trade unions; collective bargaining (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J28 J51 J81 L23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-com, nep-ino and nep-lab
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp2002.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Unions, Tripartite Competition and Innovation (2020)
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:qss:dqsswp:2002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London Quantitative Social Science, Social Research Institute, 55-59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NU. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr Neus Bover Fonts ().