Trade Union Behaviour, Pay Bargaining and Economic Performance (FIEF Studies in Labor Markets and Economic Policy)

The fourth volume in the FIEF Studies in Labour Markets and Economic Policy explores how trade unions formulate their policy and the effect of bargaining structures on economic performance. The first of the two papers presented in this volume uses collective choice analysis to examine the process of policy formation within unions. It argues that the political processes of unions are arranged to produce uniform preferences, thereby reducing the number of issues that are submitted to votes by union members. The second paper considers the centralization of bargaining procedures and the consequences of centralized bargaining on economic performance. A new model is presented that investigates the impact of different levels of union centralization on the trade off between wages and employment.