IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/apeclt/v28y2021i17p1499-1504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do labour unions help or hurt firms to invest in the long run? Evidence from Korea

Author

Listed:
  • Ilhang Shin
  • Sanghyun Hwang

Abstract

This paper empirically addresses how labour unions affect firms’ long-term investment decisions and, thus, performances by utilizing unique firm-level data on labour unions available in Korea. We find that labour unionization makes firms invest more in human resource but less in physical capital. In addition, we show that as labour unions engage in rent-seeking behaviour, this causes firms’ investment decisions to be so distorted that the firms with labour unions get less productive, and consequently, the capital market valuates them less. Our empirical findings suggest that the problem of deciding proper investment could become more serious in the long run, if the labour unions participate in management and exercise their collective bargaining power to accomplish their interests as rent-seekers.

Suggested Citation

  • Ilhang Shin & Sanghyun Hwang, 2021. "Do labour unions help or hurt firms to invest in the long run? Evidence from Korea," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(17), pages 1499-1504, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:28:y:2021:i:17:p:1499-1504
    DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2020.1828565
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2020.1828565
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13504851.2020.1828565?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:taf:apeclt:v:28:y:2021:i:17:p:1499-1504. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEL20 .

    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.