Collective bargaining in Germany takes place at either industry or firm level. Collective bargaining coverage is much higher than union density. The share of employees covered by collective bargaining in a single firm can vary between 0% and 100%. This institutional setup suggests that researchers should explicitly distinguish union density, coverage rate at the firm level, and coverage at the individual level. Using linked employer-employee data, we estimate OLS and quantile regressions of wages on these dimensions of union influence. A higher share of employees in a firm covered by industry-wide or firm-specific contracts is associated with higher wages, but there is no clear-cut effect on wage dispersion. Yet, holding coverage at the firm level constant, individual bargaining coverage is associated with a lower wage level and less wage dispersion. A higher union density reinforces the effects of coverage, but the effect of union density is negative at all points of the wage distribution for employees who work in firms without coverage by collective bargaining. Higher union density thus compresses the wage distribution while moving the distribution in firms without coverage uniformly leftwards.

This book offers an extensive survey and synthesis of the economic literature on trade unions and collective bargaining and their impact on micro-and macro-economic outcomes. The authors demonstrate the effects of collective bargaining in different country settings and time periods. A comprehensive reference, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of labor policy as well as to policy makers and anyone with an interest in the economic consequences of unionism.

My thesis combines three distinct papers in labor economics. The first chapter is a collaborative work with Bernd Fitzenberger and Karsten Kohn. In this chapter we scrutinize the effects of union density and of collective bargaining coverage on the distribution of wages both in the covered and the uncovered sector. Collective bargaining in Germany takes place at either the industry or firm level. Collective bargaining coverage is much greater than union density. The share of employees covered by collective bargaining in a single firm can vary between 0% and 100%. This institutional setup suggests that researchers should explicitly distinguish union density, coverage rate at the firm level, and coverage at the individual level. Using linked employer-employee data, we estimate OLS and quantile regressions of wages on these dimensions of union influence. A higher share of employees in a firm covered by industry-wide or firm-specific contracts is associated with higher wages, but there is no clear-cut effect on wage dispersion. Yet, holding coverage at the firm level constant, individual bargaining coverage is associated with a lower wage level and less wage dispersion. A greater union density reinforces the effects of coverage, but the effect of union density is negative at all points of the wage distribution for employees who work in firms without collective bargaining coverage. Greater union density thus compresses the wage distribution while moving the distribution in firms without coverage uniformly. The second chapter evaluates the impact of the UK Working Time Regulations 1998, which introduced mandatory paid holiday entitlement. The regulation gave(nearly) all workers the right to a minimum of 4 weeks of paid holiday per a year. With constant weekly pay this change amounts effectively to an increase in the real hourly wage of about 8.5% for someone going from 0 to 4 weeks paid holiday per year, which should lead to adjustments in employment. For employees I use complementary log-log regression to account for right-censoring of employment spells. I find no increase in the hazard to exit employment within a year after treatment. Adjustments in wages cannot explain this result as they are increasing for the treated groups relative to the control. I also evaluate the long run trend in aggregate employment, using the predicted treatment probabilities in a difference-in-differences framework. Here I find a small and statistically significant decrease in employment. This effect is driven by a trend reversal in employment, coinciding with the treatment. The third chapter considers how the availability of a personal computer at home changed employment for married women. I develop a theoretical model that motivates the empirical specifications. Using data from the U.S. CPS from 1984 to 2003, I find that employment is 1.5 to 7 percentage points higher for women in households with a computer. The model predicts that the increase in employment is driven by higher wages. I find having a computer at home is associated with higher wages, and employment in more computer intensive occupations, which is consistent with the model. Decomposing the changes by educational attainment shows that both women with low levels of education (high school diploma or less) and women with the highest levels of education (Master's degree or more) have high returns from home computers.

During the past two decades, union density has declined in the United States and employer provision of health benefits has undergone substantial changes in extent and form. Using individual data spanning the years 1983-1997, combined with establishment data for 1993, we update and extend previous analyses of private-sector union effects on employer-provided health benefits. We find that the union effect on health insurance coverage rates has fallen somewhat but remains large, due to an increase over time in the union effect on employee 'take-up' of offered insurance, and that declining unionization explains 20-35 percent of the decline in employee health coverage. The increasing union take-up effect is linked to union effects on employees' direct costs for health insurance and the availability of retiree coverage.

This paper describes the construction of time-consistent national and state-level estimates of union density for the years 1964 through 2000. Two sources of data are combined to produce these estimates, the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of U.S. households, and the discontinued BLS publication Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations, based on data reported by labor unions to the government. The union density measure represents the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary employees who are union members, including employees in the public sector. A more limited database, available for years since 1977 and based exclusively on the CPS, provides a measure of union coverage density, representing the percentage of nonagricultural wage and salary workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The databases will be updated annually and distributed freely via the Internet.