Why Unions Survive: Understanding How Unions Overcome the Free-Rider Problem

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Murphy, Richard
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF LABOR ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0734-306X
• DOI: 10.1086/706091
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 1141-1188
• 关键词: social custom; unemployment; membership; impacts; CHOICE

摘要

This paper provides evidence for why individuals join unions instead of free riding. I model membership as legal insurance. To test the model, I use the incidence of news stories concerning allegations against teachers in the United Kingdom as a plausibly exogenous shock to demand for such insurance. I find that for every five stories occurring in a region, teachers are 2.2 percentage points more likely to be members in the subsequent year. These effects are larger when teachers share characteristics with the news story and can explain 45% of the growth in teacher union membership between 1992 and 2010.