Do firms' political connections depress the union wage effect? Evidence from China

Yang Song, Jidong Yang and Qijing Yang

China Economic Review, 2016, vol. 38, issue C, 183-198

Abstract: Our paper reconciles the debated literature on the role of the Chinese unions by exploring the heterogeneous effects of unionization on wages in firms with and without political connections. We utilize a survey of 1268 firms in 12 cities to verify our hypothesis that wages increase due to unionization, but this union wage effect is significantly depressed by firms' political connections. Through a detailed analysis of the mechanism behind the empirical results, we conclude that unions increase workers' wages by strengthening the bargaining power of workers, while this bargaining power can be weakened by firms' political connections. Our main conclusion is robust to a series of robustness checks. Moreover, the results from quantile regressions inform us that the union wage effect and the role of political connections may vary along with the firms' wage distribution. Our findings suggest that the solution to further increase wages for low-wage workers and reduce wage inequality is to make the labor union an independent organization which can freely bargain with firms in terms of workers' wages and benefits, rather than an agency subordinate to the government whose role can be affected by the government support and undermined largely by firms' political connections.

Keywords: Unionization; Political connections; Wage inequality; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 J31 J51 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:38:y:2016:i:c:p:183-198

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2016.01.006

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China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

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