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Is Collective Bargaining Pareto Efficient? A Survey of the Literature

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  • Nicholas Lawson

Abstract

It would be hard, even today, to deny that labor unions are important economic institutions, and it is this importance that makes their consequences for efficiency so substantial. Interest in the economic analysis of unions was revived in the early 1980s, in large part by a paper by Ian McDonald and Robert Solow which formalized, algebraically and graphically, ideas which were first expressed in the context of labor markets 35 years earlier by Wassily Leontief. The standard textbook model of the labour union treats the union as a conventional monopoly seller of labor, selecting the wage while the firm chooses the level of employment; McDonald & Solow, however, drew from Leontief's work to suggest an alternative in which the firm and union negotiate to a Pareto efficient contract. Further theoretical work followed, and a still-growing empirical literature began to develop, a significant portion of it dedicated to testing McDonald & Solow's model against the traditional labor demand curve theory. A wide variety of empirical procedures and tests have been attempted, with a diverse and contradictory range of findings; given the importance of the question of the efficiency of union contracts, an up-to-date survey of the literature may be useful in synthesizing past results and pointing the way to future research, and it is this role which the current paper will attempt to fill.
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  • Nicholas Lawson, 2011. "Is Collective Bargaining Pareto Efficient? A Survey of the Literature," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 282-304, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jlabre:v:32:y:2011:i:3:p:282-304
    DOI: 10.1007/s12122-011-9112-y
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    Cited by:

    1. Fanti, Luciano & Buccella, Domenico, 2020. "Strategic Trade Policy with Asymmetric Bargaining Agenda," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 73(2), pages 257-274.
    2. David Marsden, 2015. "The future of the German industrial relations model [Die Zukunft des deutschen Modells der Arbeitsbeziehungen]," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 48(2), pages 169-187, August.
    3. Carsten Eckel & Hartmut Egger, 2017. "The Dilemma of Labor Unions: Local Objectives vs Global Bargaining," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 534-566, August.
    4. Neto, António & Furukawa, Yuichi & Ribeiro, Ana Paula, 2017. "Can Trade Unions Increase Social Welfare? An R&D Model with Cash-in-Advance Constraints," MPRA Paper 77312, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Laszlo Goerke & Nora Paulus, 2024. "Collective Bargaining about Corporate Social Responsibility," IAAEU Discussion Papers 202401, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    6. Charlie Blunden, 2022. "Between Market Failures and Justice Failures: Trade-Offs Between Efficiency and Equality in Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(3), pages 647-660, July.
    7. Thorsten Upmann & Julia Müller, 2014. "The Structure of Firm-Specific Labour Unions," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 170(2), pages 336-364, June.
    8. Claus‐Jochen Haake & Thorsten Upmann & Papatya Duman, 2023. "Wage bargaining and employment revisited: separability and efficiency in collective bargaining," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(2), pages 403-440, April.
    9. Luciano Fanti, 2011. "When an efficient bargaining is more "efficient" than a competitive labour market," Discussion Papers 2011/131, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    10. Afonso, Óscar, 2016. "Effects of labour-market institutions on employment, wages, R&D intensity and growth in 27 OECD countries: From theory to practice," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 48-62.
    11. Claus-Jochen Haake & Thorsten Upmann & Papatya Duman, 2020. "Wage Bargaining and Employment Revisited: Separability and Efficiency in Collective Bargaining," CESifo Working Paper Series 8422, CESifo.
    12. Kraft, Kornelius, 2018. "Productivity and distribution effects of codetermination in an efficient bargaining model," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 458-485.
    13. Julia Müller & Thorsten Upmann, 2013. "Centralised Labour Market Negotiations," CESifo Working Paper Series 4470, CESifo.
    14. Aleksandra Gregorič & Marc Steffen Rapp, 2019. "Board‐Level Employee Representation (BLER) and Firms’ Responses to Crisis," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 376-422, July.
    15. Luciano Fanti, 2011. "When do firms prefer either monopolistic unions or an efficient bargaining?," Discussion Papers 2011/130, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    16. Elizabeth Schroeder & Victor J. Tremblay, 2014. "Union Bargaining in an Oligopoly Market with Cournot-Bertrand Competition: Welfare and Policy Implications," Economies, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-14, March.
    17. Marco de Pinto & Jörg Lingens, 2019. "Unionization, information asymmetry and the de‐location of firms," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 1782-1823, November.
    18. Claus-Jochen Haake & Thorsten Upmann & Papatya Duman, 2019. "The Decomposability of the Nash Bargaining Solution in Labor Markets," Working Papers CIE 128, Paderborn University, CIE Center for International Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unions; Collective bargaining; Efficient bargaining;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • J30 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - General
    • J41 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Labor Contracts
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects

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