IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/1728.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Municipal Employment, Municipal Unions, and Demand for Municipal Services

Author

Listed:
  • Jeffrey S. Zax

Abstract

Municipal unions may often use their own votes and those of sympathetic fellow citizens to promote increases in demand for municipal services. If successful, this strategy can increase member employment levels without sacrificing compensation. Municipal employee unionization significantly increases levels of annual manhours and employment per capita, and reduces annual hours of workper employee. The net effect of average unionization levels is to increase employees per capita by at least 4.7%, and manhours per capita by at least 3.3%, over levels that would prevail in the absence of municipal unions. These effects occur almost entirely in functions withr ecognized bargaining units. In these functions, employment levels are at least 9.9% higher than they would be in the absence of unionization.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeffrey S. Zax, 1985. "Municipal Employment, Municipal Unions, and Demand for Municipal Services," NBER Working Papers 1728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:1728
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w1728.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mieszkowski, Peter & Stein, Robert M., 1983. "Trends and prospects in state and local finance," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 224-241, September.
    2. Inman, Robert P, 1982. "The Economic Case for Limits to Government," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(2), pages 176-183, May.
    3. Douglas H. Blair & David L. Crawford, 1984. "Labor Union Objectives and Collective Bargaining," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(3), pages 547-566.
    4. Gramlich, Edward M & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1982. "Micro Estimates of Public Spending Demand Functions and Tests of the Tiebout and Median-Voter Hypotheses," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(3), pages 536-560, June.
    5. Courant, Paul N & Gramlich, Edward M & Rubinfeld, Daniel L, 1979. "Public Employee Market Power and the Level of Government Spending," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(5), pages 806-817, December.
    6. Freeman, Richard B, 1986. "Unionism Comes to the Public Sector," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 24(1), pages 41-86, March.
    7. Hall, Robert E & Lilien, David M, 1979. "Efficient Wage Bargains under Uncertain Supply and Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(5), pages 868-879, December.
    8. McDonald, Ian M & Solow, Robert M, 1981. "Wage Bargaining and Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 896-908, December.
    9. Farber, Henry S, 1978. "Individual Preferences and Union Wage Determination: The Case of the United Mine Workers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(5), pages 923-942, October.
    10. Niskanen, William A, 1975. "Bureaucrats and Politicians," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(3), pages 617-643, December.
    11. Henry S. Farber, 1984. "The Analysis of Union Behavior," NBER Working Papers 1502, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Ott, Mack, 1980. "Bureaucracy, monopoly, and the demand for municipal services," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 362-382, November.
    13. William Fellner, 1947. "Prices and Wages under Bilateral Monopoly," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 61(4), pages 503-532.
    14. Oswald, Andrew J, 1982. "The Microeconomic Theory of the Trade Union," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(367), pages 576-595, September.
    15. John H. Pencavel, 1984. "The Tradeoff Between Wages and Employment in Trade Union Objectives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 99(2), pages 215-231.
    16. Jeffrey S. Zax, 1985. "Labor Relations, Wages and Nonwage Compensation in Municipal Employment," NBER Working Papers 1582, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Borcherding, Thomas E & Deacon, Robert T, 1972. "The Demand for the Services of Non-Federal Governments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 891-901, December.
    18. Pencavel, John, 1985. " Wages and Employment under Trade Unionism: Microeconomic Models and Macroeconomic Applications," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(2), pages 197-225.
    19. Ehrenberg, Ronald G. & Schwarz, Joshua L., 1987. "Public-sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1219-1260, Elsevier.
    20. Darold T. Barnum & I. B. Helburn, 1982. "Influencing the Electorate: Experience with Referenda on Public Employee Bargaining," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 35(3), pages 330-342, April.
    21. Warren-Boulton, Frederick R, 1977. "Vertical Control by Labor Unions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 309-322, June.
    22. Henry S. Farber, 1984. "The Analysis of Union Behavior," Working papers 355, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    23. Edward M. Gramlich & Daniel L. Rubinfeld, 1982. "Voting on public spending: Differences between public employees, transfer recipients, and private workers," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 1(4), pages 516-533.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Jeffrey Zax & Casey Ichniowski, 1988. "The Effects of Public Sector Unionism on Pay, Employment, Department Budgets, and Municipal Expenditures," NBER Chapters, in: When Public Sector Workers Unionize, pages 323-364, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Richard B. Freeman & Casey Ichniowski, 1988. "Introduction: The Public Sector Look of American Unionism," NBER Chapters, in: When Public Sector Workers Unionize, pages 1-16, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nicholas Lawson, 2011. "Is Collective Bargaining Pareto Efficient? A Survey of the Literature," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 282-304, September.
    2. repec:pri:indrel:dsp01cc08hf62w is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:eee:labchp:v:2:y:1986:i:c:p:1039-1089 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Jeffrey Zax & Casey Ichniowski, 1988. "The Effects of Public Sector Unionism on Pay, Employment, Department Budgets, and Municipal Expenditures," NBER Chapters, in: When Public Sector Workers Unionize, pages 323-364, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Gregory, Robert G. & Borland, Jeff, 1999. "Recent developments in public sector labor markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 53, pages 3573-3630, Elsevier.
    7. Kim Hawtrey, 1990. "Dynamic Behaviour of a Unionized Solow‐Swan Economy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 66(2), pages 81-92, June.
    8. Habib Ahmed & Stephen M. Miller, 1999. "A Model of Endogenous Union Density and Membership," Working papers 1999-01, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    9. Johnson, George E, 1990. "Work Rules, Featherbedding, and Pareto-optimal Union-Management Bargaining," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 8(1), pages 237-259, January.
    10. Jan Brueckner & Kevin O'Brien, 1989. "Modeling government behavior in collective bargaining: A test for self-interested bureaucrats," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 15-41, October.
    11. Fanti, Luciano & Gori, Luca, 2013. "Efficient bargaining versus right to manage: A stability analysis in a Cournot duopoly with trade unions," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 205-211.
    12. Almas Heshmati & Ilham Haouas, 2004. "The effects of union wage-settings on firms' production factor decisions," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(7), pages 415-420.
    13. Henry S. Farber, 1984. "The Analysis of Union Behavior," NBER Working Papers 1502, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Gene M. Grossman, 1984. "International Competition and the Unionized Sector," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 17(3), pages 541-556, August.
    15. Richard B. Freeman & Robert G. Valletta, 1987. "The Effect of Public Sector Labor laws on Collective Bargaining, Wages, and Employment," NBER Working Papers 2284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Fanti, Luciano & Gori, Luca, 2011. "Efficient bargaining versus right to manage: a stability analysis with heterogeneous players in a duopoly with quantity competition and trade unions," MPRA Paper 34434, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. David G. Blanchflower & Andrew J. Oswald, 1995. "The Wage Curve," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026202375x, December.
    18. Rodolfo Gonzalez & Stephen Mehay, 1985. "Bureaucracy and the divisibility of local public output," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 89-101, January.
    19. Luciano Fanti, 2011. "When an efficient bargaining is more "efficient" than a competitive labour market," Discussion Papers 2011/131, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    20. Pierre Cahuc, 1990. "La théorie des négociations salariales : une revue de la littérature," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 92(1), pages 21-30.
    21. Oswald, Andrew J, 1982. "Optimal Intervention in an Economy with Trade Unions," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 221, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    22. Mulder, C.B., 1987. "Inefficiency of automatically linking unemployment benefits to private sector wage rates," Other publications TiSEM 0ed0d42c-6fc5-4885-a8de-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    23. Fanti, Luciano, 2013. "Cross-ownership and unions in a Cournot duopoly: When profits reduce with horizontal product differentiation," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 34-40.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:1728. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.