The Impact of Unions on the Wage Distribution: Evidence from Higher Education

Michael Baker, Yosh Halberstam, Kory Kroft, Alexandre Mas and Derek Messacar

American Economic Review: Insights, 2026, vol. 8, issue 2, 196-213

Abstract: We estimate the impact of unionization on the wage distribution of Canadian university faculty using longitudinal administrative data on salaries and exploiting the staggered rollout of unionization across institutions. We find that unionization compressed salaries: Wages at the bottom of the unconditional distribution increased by roughly 10 percent, while wages at the top were unaffected. Our evidence suggests that these distributional impacts were driven by the introduction of contractual salary floors. We also estimate little impact of unionization on faculty employment. Instead, our results suggest that the increase in universities' wage bills was financed by an increase in student enrollment.

JEL-codes: I23 J31 J45 J51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20240722 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E234261V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25373 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25374 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:aerins:v:8:y:2026:i:2:p:196-213

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20240722

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review: Insights is currently edited by Amy Finkelstein

More articles in American Economic Review: Insights from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().