The rise and fall of unions in the United States

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dinlersoz, Emin; Greenwood, Jeremy
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2016.08.008
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 129-146
• 关键词: Mass production; Computer age; skill-biased technological change; income inequality; Union membership

摘要

Union membership in the United States displayed a boolean AND-shaped pattern over the 20th century, while income inequality sketched a boolean OR. A model of unions is developed to analyze these facts. There is a distribution of productivity across firms in the economy. Firms hire capital, plus skilled and unskilled labor. Unionization is a costly process. A union chooses how many firms to organize and the union wage. Simulation of the model establishes that skill-biased technological change, which affects the productivity of skilled labor relative to unskilled labor, can potentially explain the observed paths for union membership and income inequality. Published by Elsevier B.V.