IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/intlab/v162y2023i3p481-503.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trade unions and income inequality: Evidence from a panel of European countries

Author

Listed:
  • Roberta MONTEBELLO
  • Jonathan SPITERI
  • Philip VON BROCKDORFF

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between trade unions and rising income inequality observed in advanced economies in recent decades. The role of trade unions in addressing increasing income inequality has been overlooked in empirical studies, despite its theoretical ambiguity. The baseline empirical model, estimated for 26 European countries from 2005 to 2018, specifies income inequality as a function of the trade union density rate, its squared value, and a set of control variables. Labour market institutions, other than unions, are incorporated into the model to assess the distributional effects of union density within the entire institutional framework. The authors find that union density has a statistically significant and persistent inverted U‐shaped relationship with income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Roberta MONTEBELLO & Jonathan SPITERI & Philip VON BROCKDORFF, 2023. "Trade unions and income inequality: Evidence from a panel of European countries," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 162(3), pages 481-503, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:intlab:v:162:y:2023:i:3:p:481-503
    DOI: 10.1111/ilr.12373
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12373
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ilr.12373?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy Greenwood & Nezih Guner & Georgi Kocharkov & Cezar Santos, 2014. "Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 348-353, May.
    2. António Afonso & Ludger Schuknecht & Vito Tanzi, 2010. "Income distribution determinants and public spending efficiency," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(3), pages 367-389, September.
    3. O’Higgins Niall & Pica Giovanni, 2020. "Complementarities between Labour Market Institutions and their Causal Impact on Youth Labour Market Outcomes," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(3), pages 1-37, July.
    4. José De Gregorio & Jong–Wha Lee, 2002. "Education and Income Inequality: New Evidence From Cross‐Country Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 48(3), pages 395-416, September.
    5. Andrea Garnero & Stephan Kampelmann & François Rycx, 2013. "Minimum Wage Systems and Earnings Inequalities:Does Institutional Diversity Matter?," DULBEA Working Papers 13-06, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Bentolila Samuel & Saint-Paul Gilles, 2003. "Explaining Movements in the Labor Share," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-33, October.
    7. Anthony B. Atkinson & Chrysa Leventi & Brian Nolan & Holly Sutherland & Iva Tasseva, 2017. "Reducing poverty and inequality through tax-benefit reform and the minimum wage: the UK as a case-study," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 303-323, December.
    8. Rueda, David, 2007. "Social Democracy Inside Out: Partisanship and Labor Market Policy in Advanced Industrialized Democracies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199234059.
    9. Krusell, Per & Rudanko, Leena, 2016. "Unions in a frictional labor market," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 35-50.
    10. Andreas Peichl & Nico Pestel & Hilmar Schneider, 2012. "Does Size Matter? The Impact Of Changes In Household Structure On Income Distribution In Germany," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 58(1), pages 118-141, March.
    11. Stephen Nickell & Luca Nunziata & Wolfgang Ochel, 2005. "Unemployment in the OECD Since the 1960s. What Do We Know?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(500), pages 1-27, January.
    12. Julien Gourdon & Nicolas Maystre & Jaime de Melo, 2015. "Openness, Inequality and Poverty: Endowments Matter," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Developing Countries in the World Economy, chapter 20, pages 497-532, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    13. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García‐Peñalosa, 2010. "Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(307), pages 413-450, July.
    14. David Card & Thomas Lemieux & W. Craig Riddell, 2004. "Unions and Wage Inequality," Journal of Labor Research, Transaction Publishers, vol. 25(4), pages 519-562, October.
    15. Stephen Nickell, 1997. "Unemployment and Labor Market Rigidities: Europe versus North America," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 55-74, Summer.
    16. Florian Hoffmann & David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2020. "Growing Income Inequality in the United States and Other Advanced Economies," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 52-78, Fall.
    17. Peter Hoeller & Isabelle Joumard & Isabell Koske, 2014. "Reducing Income Inequality While Boosting Economic Growth: Can It Be Done? Evidence From Oecd Countries," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 59(01), pages 1-22.
    18. Delacroix, Alain, 2006. "A multisectorial matching model of unions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 573-596, April.
    19. Andrea Bassanini & Romain Duval, 2009. "Unemployment, institutions, and reform complementarities: re-assessing the aggregate evidence for OECD countries," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 25(1), pages 40-59, Spring.
    20. Partridge, Mark D. & Rickman, Dan S. & Levernier, William, 1996. "Trends in U.S. income inequality: Evidence from a panel of states," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 17-37.
    21. Maarten Keune, 2015. "The effects of the EU’s assault on collective bargaining: less governance capacity and more inequality," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 21(4), pages 477-483, November.
    22. Kamila Fialová & OndÅej Schneider, 2009. "Labor Market Institutions and Their Effect on Labor Market Performance in the New EU Member Countries," Eastern European Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3), pages 57-83, May.
    23. Dierk Herzer, 2014. "Unions and income inequality: evidence from Ireland," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 24-27, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Osama Alfalah & Mohammad Ali & Abdullah Alhammadi, 2024. "Free Trade Agreements and Inequality: The Prospect for the UK Post-Brexit," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 14(4), pages 245-252, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García‐Peñalosa, 2010. "Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(307), pages 413-450, July.
    2. Salverda, Wiemer & Checchi, Daniele, 2014. "Labour-Market Institutions and the Dispersion of Wage Earnings," IZA Discussion Papers 8220, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Lehmann, Hartmut & Muravyev, Alexander, 2009. "How Important Are Labor Market Institutions for Labor Market Performance in Transition Countries?," IZA Discussion Papers 4673, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. H. Lehmann & A. Muravyev, 2010. "Labor market institutions and labor market performance: what can we learn from transition countries?," Working Papers 714, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    5. Caruso Raul & Antonella Biscione, 2022. "Militarization and Income Inequality in European Countries (2000–2017)," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 28(3), pages 267-285, September.
    6. Gabriel J. Felbermayr & Mario Larch & Wolfgang Lechthaler, 2013. "Unemployment in an Interdependent World," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 262-301, February.
    7. Richard B. Freeman, 2007. "Labor Market Institutions Around the World," NBER Working Papers 13242, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Davide Furceri & Ernesto Crivelli & Mr. Joël Toujas-Bernate, 2012. "Can Policies Affect Employment Intensity of Growth? A Cross-Country Analysis," IMF Working Papers 2012/218, International Monetary Fund.
    9. Sonali Jain-Chandra & Tidiane Kinda & Kalpana Kochhar & Shi Piao & Johanna Schauer, 2019. "Sharing the Growth Dividend: Analysis of Inequality in Asia," Journal of Banking and Financial Economics, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 2(12), pages 5-28, September.
    10. Dierk Herzer, 2016. "Unions and Income Inequality," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 30(3), pages 267-274, August.
    11. Hamza Bennani, 2018. "Media Perception of Fed Chair's Overconfidence and Market Expectations," EconomiX Working Papers 2018-29, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    12. Thibault Darcillon, 2016. "Do Interactions between Finance and Labour Market Institutions Affect the Income Distribution?," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 30(3), pages 235-257, September.
    13. Daudey, Emilie & Decreuse, Bruno, 2006. "Higher education, employers’ monopsony power and the labour share in OECD countries," MPRA Paper 3631, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Simon Sturn, 2011. "Labour market regimes and unemployment in OECD countries," IMK Working Paper 6-2011, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    15. Daniele Checchi & Cecilia García-Peñalosa, 2008. "Labour market institutions and income inequality [‘Globalisation and the great U-turn: Income inequality trends in 16 OECD countries’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 23(56), pages 602-649.
    16. Felbermayr, Gabriel & Prat, Julien & Schmerer, Hans-Jörg, 2011. "Trade and unemployment: What do the data say?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(6), pages 741-758, August.
    17. Nathalie Greenan & Ekaterina Kalugina & Mouhamadou Moustapha Niang, 2017. "Work Organisation and Workforce Vunerability to Non-Employment: Evidence from OECD’s Survey on Adult Skills (PIAAC) [Organisation du travail et vulnérabilité au non-emploi : une étude empirique à p," Working Papers hal-02162457, HAL.
    18. Andrea Bassanini & Thomas Manfredi, 2014. "Capital’s grabbing hand? A cross-industry analysis of the decline of the labor share in OECD countries," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 4(1), pages 3-30, June.
    19. Heid, Benedikt & Larch, Mario, 2012. "Migration, trade and unemployment," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 6, pages 1-40.
    20. Borsi, Mihály Tamás, 2018. "Credit contractions and unemployment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 573-593.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:intlab:v:162:y:2023:i:3:p:481-503. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilounch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.