The Effect of Right-to-Work Laws on Business and Economic Conditions: A Multivariate Approach

Lonnie Stevans

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act (1935) authorized a state's right to prohibit unions from requiring a worker to pay dues, even when the worker is covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Within a short time of the amendment's passage, twelve (12) states passed "right-to-work" laws, as did ten (10) more states in the intervening years. Although there has been considerable research on the influence of right-to-work laws on union density, organizing efforts, industrial development and some study of wage differences, there has been no examination of the legislations’ effect on business and economic conditions across states. In this paper, the average differences in business conditions, personal income, and employment across states that have enacted right-to-work laws versus those that do not have this legislation are examined using a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). Our most notable result is the finding that although right-to-work states may be more attractive to business, this does not necessarily translate into enhanced economic viability for all sectors in the right-to-work state. Not only are personal income and employment lower, but there are no significant differences in the number of firms and business formations between right-to-work and non-right-to-work states.

Keywords: right-to-work laws; business formation; employment; Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 C50 J51 J58 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-11-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5638/1/MPRA_paper_5638.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:5638

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().