Layard, Richard 
ORCID: 0000-0002-1313-699X and Nickell, S.
(1990)
Is unemployment lower if unions bargain over employment?
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 105 (3).
pp. 773-787.
ISSN 0033-5533
Abstract
We consider an economy in which all firms are unionized and bargain with their own union. (1) If unions bargain over employment as well as wages, employment will be the same as if they bargain over wages only, provided that the production function is Cobb-Douglas. (Employment will be higher if the elasticity of substitution between labor and capital is smaller than unity.) (2) If we start from a fully competitive labor market and then move to one of efficient bargaining (over wages and employment), employment falls. This is so even if the marginal utility of income is constant, so that bargaining is “strongly efficient.”
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/ |
| Additional Information: | © 1990 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Divisions: | Centre for Economic Performance Economics |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
| JEL classification: | J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J5 - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining > J51 - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Jun 2008 14:01 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Dec 2024 21:56 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/6112 |
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