The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools

Daniel S. Hosken and David Margolis

CIRANO Working Papers from CIRANO

Abstract: This paper develops a bargaining model of wage and employment determination for the public sectror. The solution to the model generates structural wage and employment equations that are estimated using data from New York State teacher-school district collective bargaining agreements. An advantage of this approach is that the major collective bargaining models (monopoly union, right to manage, efficient contracting, and inefficient contracting) are nested in the structural equations based on flexible functional forms and these models can be empirically tested as restrictions on estimated model parameters. The empirical results suggest that the allocation of resources generated by collective bargaining in New York State public schools is, by and large, not Pareto efficient. Furthermore, it is possible to estimate separate measures of union bargaining power over wages and employment. Empirically, it appears that union bargaining power over wages is around 0.53, while bargaining power over employment is around 0.71. In addition, the paper demonstrates the importance of controlling for the nature of the collective agreement when measuring the level of public services that flow to a community in the presence of a unionized public sector work force. Nous proposons un modèle de négociations collectives sur les salaires et l'emploi dans le secteur public. La solution de ce modèle implique des équations structurelles de détermination des salaires et d'emploi qui sont estimées à partir de données provenant des conventions colléctives des écoles publiques de l'état de New York. Notre approche a l'avantage d'englober tous les modèles majeurs de la littérature sur les négociations collectives (syndicat monopole, droit à gérer, négociations efficaces et négociations inefficaces) et de relier chaque modèle à une restriction d'égalité sur un ou plusieurs paramètres estimés. Nos résultats suggèrent que l'allocation des ressources spécifiée dans les conventions collectives des enseignants de l'état de New York n'est, en générale, pas efficace. De plus, notre approche nous permet d'estimer le pouvoir de négociationsur les salaires et sur l'emploi séparément. Nous trouvons un pouvoir de négociation sur les salaires de 0.53, et sur l'emploi de 0.71. Finalement, nous démontrons l'importance de contrôler le caractère endogène des salaires lors de l'analyse des flux des services publics dans un marché syndicalisé.

Keywords: Collective Bargaining; Efficient Contracting; Public Sector Union; Education; Négociations collectives; contrats efficaces; syndicat du secteur public; éducation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996-03-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/96s-10.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools (1998)
Working Paper: The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools (1998)
Working Paper: The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public School (1997)
Working Paper: The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools (1996)
Working Paper: The Efficiency of Collective Bargaining in Public Schools (1996)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cir:cirwor:96s-10

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