IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v60y2006i1p67-87.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Union Wages and Union Decline: Evidence from the Construction Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Dale Belman
  • Paula B. Voos

Abstract

Two well-documented empirical findings are that unionized employees typically receive substantially higher compensation than their non-union counterparts and that union representation in the United States has declined over time. Some observers have hypothesized a causal link between these two phenomena: the achievement of a union wage premium, they argue, hastened union decline both by reducing union firms' economic competitiveness and by inducing employers to adopt various union avoidance strategies. Using data from the Current Population Survey and the Census Bureau's Census of Construction, the authors test this hypothesis for the construction industry. Even in estimations that allow for a lagged response and incorporate a variety of controls, they find no evidence that high union/nonunion wage ratios in construction in the 1970s or 1980s resulted in lower union membership in 2000.

Suggested Citation

  • Dale Belman & Paula B. Voos, 2006. "Union Wages and Union Decline: Evidence from the Construction Industry," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 60(1), pages 67-87, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:60:y:2006:i:1:p:67-87
    DOI: 10.1177/001979390606000104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979390606000104
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/001979390606000104?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. Freeman, Richard B, 1986. "The Effect of the Union Wage Differential on Management Opposition and Union Organizing Success," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 92-96, May.
    2. Sami Daniel & Philip Arestis & John Grahl (ed.), 1999. "The History and Practice of Economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1250.
    3. Barry T. Hirsch & David A. MacPherson, 2003. "Union Membership and Coverage Database from the Current Population Survey: Note," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 56(2), pages 349-354, January.
    4. Barry T. Hirsch & Edward J. Schumacher, 2001. "Private Sector Union Density and the Wage Premium: Past, Present, and Future ," Journal of Labor Research, Transaction Publishers, vol. 22(3), pages 487-518, July.
    5. Rivers, Douglas & Vuong, Quang H., 1988. "Limited information estimators and exogeneity tests for simultaneous probit models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 347-366, November.
    6. Robinson, Chris, 1989. "The Joint Determination of Union Status and Union Wage Effects: Some Tests of Alternative Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 639-667, June.
    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. Cihan Bilginsoy, 2013. "Union Wage Gap in the U.S. Construction Sector: 1983–2007," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 677-701, July.
    2. Kevin Duncan & Peter Philips & Mark Prus, 2014. "Prevailing Wage Regulations and School Construction Costs: Cumulative Evidence from British Columbia," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 593-616, October.
    3. Robert Pollin & Jeannette Wicks-Lim & Heidi Garrett-Peltier, 2009. "Green Prosperity: How Clean-Energy Policies Can Fight Poverty and Raise Living Standards in the United States," Published Studies green_prosperity, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    4. Changhui Kang & Myoung-jae Lee, 2014. "Estimation of Binary Response Models With Endogenous Regressors," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 502-530, October.

    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. Helge Sanner, 2006. "Imperfect goods and labor markets, and the union wage gap," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 19(1), pages 119-136, February.
    2. Gomez, Rafael & Tzioumis, Konstantinos, 2006. "What do unions do to executive compensation?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19865, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Barry T. Hirsch, 2004. "Reconsidering Union Wage Effects: Surveying New Evidence on an Old Topic," Journal of Labor Research, Transaction Publishers, vol. 25(2), pages 233-266, April.
    4. Tito Boeri & Jan van Ours, 2013. "The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10142.
    5. Ines Blohm & Sebastian Briel & Martina Pauly & Uta Heumann & Claudia Br lin, 2006. "Comparative Human Resource Management in the European Banking Sector: The Effect of Collective Bargaining Power on Working Conditions," LIS Working papers 450, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. John R. Graham & Hyunseob Kim & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2013. "Human Capital Loss In Corporate Bankruptcy," Working Papers 13-37, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Zachary Parolin, 2019. "Automation and Occupational Wage Trends: What Role for Unions and Collective Bargaining?," LIS Working papers 767, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    8. Michele Campolieti, 2018. "Matching and Inverse Propensity Weighting Estimates of the Union Wage Premium: Evidence from Canada, 1997–2014," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 101-130, January.
    9. Walsh, Frank, 2013. "The union wage effect and ability bias: Evidence from Ireland," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 296-298.
    10. Tansel, Aysit & Keskin, Halil Ibrahim, 2017. "Education Effects on Days Hospitalized and Days out of Work by Gender: Evidence from Turkey," IZA Discussion Papers 11210, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Daron Acemoglu & Philippe Aghion & Claire Lelarge & John Van Reenen & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2007. "Technology, Information, and the Decentralization of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1759-1799.
    12. Guillermo A. Calvo, 2008. "Crises in Emerging Markets Economies: A Global Perspective," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Kevin Cowan & Sebastián Edwards & Rodrigo O. Valdés & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt- (ed.),Current Account and External Financing, edition 1, volume 12, chapter 3, pages 085-115, Central Bank of Chile.
    13. Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda, 2012. "Targeted Subsidies and Private Market Participation: An Assessment of Fertilizer Demand in Nigeria:," IFPRI discussion papers 1194, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    14. Shilpi, Forhad & Umali-Deininger, Dina, 2007. "Where to sell ? market facilities and agricultural marketing," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4455, The World Bank.
    15. Jinhyun Lee, 2013. "A Consistent Nonparametric Bootstrap Test of Exogeneity," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201316, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    16. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    17. Jean-Pierre Lachaud, 2007. "Les déterminants de l'inactivité économique et de la non-scolarisation des enfants aux Comores et à Madagascar. Existe-t-il une courbe de Kuznets ?," Documents de travail 140, Groupe d'Economie du Développement de l'Université Montesquieu Bordeaux IV.
    18. Lurkin, Virginie & Garrow, Laurie A. & Higgins, Matthew J. & Newman, Jeffrey P. & Schyns, Michael, 2017. "Accounting for price endogeneity in airline itinerary choice models: An application to Continental U.S. markets," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 228-246.
    19. Anthony T. Lo Sasso & Bruce D. Meyer, 2006. "The Health Care Safety Net and Crowd-Out of Private Health Insurance," NBER Working Papers 11977, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Joseph G. Altonji & Rosa L. Matzkin, 2001. "Panel Data Estimators for Nonseparable Models with Endogenous Regressors," NBER Technical Working Papers 0267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:sae:ilrrev:v:60:y:2006:i:1:p:67-87. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    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.