Productivity and trade unions in British manufacturing industry 1973-85

Kevin Denny

Applied Economics, 1997, vol. 29, issue 10, 1403-1409

Abstract: This paper uses panel data on british manufacturing industries between 1973 and 1985 to examine the relationship between productivity and labour organization. It is shown that the relationship between unions and productivity levels is sensitive to the econometric specification. The evidence points to there being no relationship in the 1970s when unions were more popular and a negative relationship from 1979 onwards. We also find evidence that industrial concentration is associated with higher levels of productivity and this accounts for more of the productivity recovery after the recession in the early 1980s than the impact of trade unions. The recession itself is shown to have had an impact on subsequent productivity growth. We also suggest that the long run gains in productivity caused by the shakeout of 1980-81 may not have compensated for the loss in output at the time.

Date: 1997
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036849700000030 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to 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:taf:applec:v:29:y:1997:i:10:p:1403-1409

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036849700000030

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().