Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/34830 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 3660
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Can conventional economic analysis help in defining and measuring the success of labor unions? In this paper, a general indicator of union welfare is proposed and particular expressions for the wage and employment objectives of unions are rearranged to derive measures of union success or welfare. These indicators combine two measures: union density and the relative union-nonunion wage gap. The indicators are applied to describe the movement of union welfare in the United States over the past eighty years, the differences in union success among groups of U.S. workers, and the variation in union well-being across countries.
Subjects: 
Trade unions
union density
relative wage effect of unionism
union objectives
JEL: 
J51
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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