Documents Sojourner, Aaron 4 results

"Using a regression discontinuity design, the authors of this article examine the effects of nursing home unionization on several labor, establishment, and consumer outcomes. They find negative effects of unionization on staffing levels and no decline in care quality, suggesting positive labor productivity effects. Some evidence suggests that nursing homes in less competitive local product markets and those with lower union density at the time of election experienced stronger union employment effects. Unionization appears to raise wages for a given worker while also shifting the composition of the workforce away from higher-earning workers. By combining credible identification of union effects and firm- and worker-level outcomes over time with measures of market-level characteristics, this study provides important new evidence on many controversial questions in the economics of unions. It also generates evidence from the service sector, which has grown in importance and where evidence has been thin."

"Controversies over the promise and the perils of union political influence have erupted around the United States. The author develops the first evidence on the degree to which labor unions develop members' political leadership in the broader community by studying the relationship between state legislators' occupations and the unionization rates of occupations across U.S. states. The fraction of legislators of a given occupation in a state increases with the occupation's rate of unionization in that state compared with the fraction of legislators of the same occupation in other states with lower unionization rates. This pattern shows up to varying degrees among the three public-sector and one private-sector occupations considered: K-12 teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and construction workers. The pattern holds conditional on differences in observable state characteristics and when using state fixed effects. Although much research has described the role of unions in influencing economic outcomes and in politics through lobbying, campaign contributions, and voter mobilization, the author adds a new perspective on the role of unions in society. They promote elected political leadership by individuals from working- and middle-class jobs. Arguments over the social value of this role of unions are explored."

"This study empirically examines the widespread belief that voluntarily negotiated agreements produce better long-run relationships than do third-party imposed resolutions, such as arbitrator decisions or court judgments. Major League Baseball provides a compelling setting for these analyses because individual performance is well measured, there is the possibility of relationship breakdown, and both voluntary and arbitrator-imposed resolutions routinely occur. Two key outcomes are analyzed: post-resolution player performance and the durability of the club–player relationship. Multivariate analyses of 1,424 salary renegotiations fail to find significant differences in subsequent player performance, but voluntary resolutions are associated with more durable post-resolution club–player relationships."

"This paper develops the first evidence on how individuals' union membership status affects their net fiscal impact, the difference between taxes they pay and cost of public benefits they receive, enriching our understanding of how labor relations interacts with public economics. Current Population Survey data between 1994 and 2015 in pooled cross-sections and individual first-difference models yield evidence that union membership has a positive net fiscal impact through the worker-level channels studied."