Turning Non-members into Members: Do Public Subsidies to Union Membership Matter?

Erling Barth, Alex Bryson and Harald Dale-Olsen
Additional contact information
Harald Dale-Olsen: Institute for Social Research, Oslo, and IZA

No 22-05, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: Using linked employer-employee data for Norway we estimate the impact of changes in tax subsidies for union membership on individuals’ membership probabilities. Increased subsidisation of the unions increases union take-up, while increased union fees reduce the demand for membership. The price elasticity of demand for union membership is -9 percent in 2012, though effects are heterogeneous across workers. In the absence of the hikes in tax subsidies and holding workforce composition constant aggregate private sector union membership density would have fallen by 5 percentage points between 2001 and 2012. But it would have fallen by 10 percentage points among those on temporary contracts, for instance.

Keywords: trade unions; union membership; wages, tax subsidies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J08 J50 J51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp2205.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Turning non-members into members: Do public subsidies to union membership matter? (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:qss:dqsswp:2205

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 ().