IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v31y1999i1p87-110.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor Relations and Productivity Growth in Advanced Capitalist Economies

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Buchele

    (Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063, Rbuchele@smith.edu)

  • Jens Christiansen

    (Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA 01075, Jchristi@mtholyoke.edu)

Abstract

In this paper, we claim that worker rights (including collective bargaining rights, employment protection, and income security) promote productivity growth. We argue that cooperative labor-management relations encourage workers to make positive contributions to technical and organizational innovations that raise labor productivity, and that an industrial relations system that secures strong worker rights fosters cooperative labor-management relations. These arguments are supported by an empirical analysis of long-run productivity growth in 15 advanced capitalist countries. We first develop an index of worker rights and show its positive effect on several indicators of labor-management cooperation. We then develop an index combining measures of worker rights and labor-management cooperation and show its positive effect on the rate of growth of labor productivity.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Buchele & Jens Christiansen, 1999. "Labor Relations and Productivity Growth in Advanced Capitalist Economies," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 31(1), pages 87-110, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:31:y:1999:i:1:p:87-110
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/31/1/87.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Robert VERGEER & Alfred KLEINKNECHT, 2014. "Do labour market reforms reduce labour productivity growth? A panel data analysis of 20 OECD countries (1960–2004)," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 153(3), pages 365-393, September.
    2. Servaas Storm & C.W.M. Naastepad, 2015. "NAIRU economics and the Eurozone crisis," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(6), pages 843-877, November.
    3. Alfred Kleinknecht, 2017. "Supply-side labour market reforms: a neglected cause of the productivity crisis," Working Papers 0027, ASTRIL - Associazione Studi e Ricerche Interdisciplinari sul Lavoro.
    4. Andrea Coveri & Mario Pianta, 2019. "The Structural Dynamics of Income Distribution:Technology, Wages and Profits," Working Papers 1901, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Department of Economics, Society & Politics - Scientific Committee - L. Stefanini & G. Travaglini, revised 2019.
    5. Servaas Storm & C.W.M. Naastepad, 2015. "Crisis and Recovery in the German Economy: The Real Lessons," Working Papers Series 10, Institute for New Economic Thinking.

    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:sae:reorpe:v:31:y:1999:i:1:p:87-110. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    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.