Organization matters: Trade union behavior during peace and war

Ralf R. Meisenzahl

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2015, vol. 43, issue 4, 919-937

Abstract: This paper employs a comparative institutional analysis to explain the origins of different trade union organizational structures in Germany and Great Britain as of 1913 and their macroeconomic implications. It shows that complementarities between the structures of employer and union organizations account for these differences. Therefore, I model coordinated industrywide unions and centralized employer organizations in Germany and fragmented unions and decentralized employer organizations in Britain as two equilibria of a union–employer game. I use World War I as a natural experiment to study the impact of union structure on union strategies and bargaining outcomes during the war in a union–government game and discuss long-run ramifications of the bargaining outcomes.

Keywords: Trade unions; Institutional change; World War I (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J51 N30 N44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147596715000475
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jcecon:v:43:y:2015:i:4:p:919-937

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2015.03.006

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Comparative Economics is currently edited by D. Berkowitz and G. Roland

More articles in Journal of Comparative Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().