IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/882.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Dynamic Model Of Trade Union Contract Duration

Author

Abstract

There has been a great deal of research on trade unions and wage contracts in recent year, but there has been relatively little work on the determinants of contract length. This is unusual given that the duration of union contracts has varied substantially in post-war industrial economies both across time and across countries(see Dunlop J. and Bok D. (1970), Christofides L. N. and Wilton D. A. (1983), Ehrenberg Danziger and San (1984), Christofides L. N. (1985), Cecchetti (1987) and Bils M. (1987). This paper reviews the existing literature on contract duration and presents a simple explanation of optimal contract length for a wage setting trade union in a dynamic, uncertain environment. It is argued that optimal contract duration depends on a basic welfare trade-off between the benefits of wage precommitment and the costs of reduced ex-post wage flexibility. The cyclical characteristics of contracts in the model arguably provide an explanation for actual contractual cycles quite different from some alternative current models. The model may also be used to provide certain prediction concerning the determinants of contract length.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip M. Bodman, 1993. "A Dynamic Model Of Trade Union Contract Duration," Working Paper 882, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:882
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econ.queensu.ca/sites/econ.queensu.ca/files/wpaper/qed_wp_882.pdf
    File Function: First version 1993
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    contractual cycles; dynamic; uncertain; trade union; wage contract; welfare trade-off; precommitment; ex-post flexibility;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J40 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - 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

    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:qed:wpaper:882. 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: Mark Babcock (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.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.