Unionisation, short-run flexibility and cost efficiency: Evidence from U.S. manufacturing

Elisabetta Magnani and David Prentice
Additional contact information
Elisabetta Magnani: The University of New South Wales

No 2000.04, Working Papers from School of Economics, La Trobe University

Abstract: Flexibility is of great interest to policy makers and in the popular policy debate, unions are believed to be a main impediment to achieving it. However, these beliefs are not based on firm empirical foundations. Using a new dataset on U.S. three digit manufacturing industries from 1971 - 1994, we quantify, for the first time, Stigler's concept of output flexibility, estimate input flexibility and quantify the effects of unionisation on both. We find that on average unionisation reduces input flexibility by about 50%, raises average costs by about 3% but reduces output flexibility by just 0.35%.

Keywords: Labour Market; Workers Representation; Costs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J5 L2 L6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2000-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/130859/2000.04.pdf First version, 2000.04.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.latrobe.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/130859/2000.04.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.latrobe.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/130859/2000.04.pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Unionisation, short-run flexibility and cost efficiency: Evidence from U.S. manufacturing (2000)
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:trb:wpaper:2000.04

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economics, La Trobe University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stephen Scoglio ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).