IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ant/wpaper/2015011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inducing political action by workers

Author

Listed:
  • DE BORGER, Bruno
  • GLAZER, Amihai

Abstract

A firm aiming to influence a governmental policy may benefit from political action by its stakeholders, such as workers. This paper studies the behavior of such a firm, showing that workers will have a greater incentive to engage in costly political activity against the governmental policy the greater their number and the higher the wage. The firm may therefore profit from paying above- market wages and from hiring what might appear to be an inefficiently large number of workers. And because unions may overcome free-rider problems of uncoordinated political effort, a firm may favor unionization, or be less opposed to unionization than it would otherwise be. The results of this paper can also explain why firms may little reduce wages in a recession, and why the higher wages paid by unionized firms do not reduce survival rates of these firms.

Suggested Citation

  • DE BORGER, Bruno & GLAZER, Amihai, 2015. "Inducing political action by workers," Working Papers 2015011, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ant:wpaper:2015011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docman/irua/f43a2a/09fad17d.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John A. List & W. Warren McHone & Daniel L. Millimet, 2003. "Effects of air quality regulation on the destination choice of relocating plants," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 55(4), pages 657-678, October.
    2. Joan Esteban & Debraj Ray, 2008. "Collective Action and the Group Size Paradox," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 379-388, Springer.
    3. Sara Fisher Ellison & Catherine Wolfram, 2006. "Coordinating on Lower Prices: Pharmaceutical Pricing under Political Pressure," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 324-340, Summer.
    4. Khanna, Madhu & Damon, Lisa A., 1999. "EPA's Voluntary 33/50 Program: Impact on Toxic Releases and Economic Performance of Firms," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 1-25, January.
    5. David S. Lee & Alexandre Mas, 2012. "Long-Run Impacts of Unions on Firms: New Evidence from Financial Markets, 1961--1999," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(1), pages 333-378.
    6. Randy Becker & Vernon Henderson, 2000. "Effects of Air Quality Regulations on Polluting Industries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(2), pages 379-421, April.
    7. Richard B. Freeman & Morris M. Kleiner, 1999. "Do Unions Make Enterprises Insolvent?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 52(4), pages 510-527, July.
    8. W. Reed Walker, 2013. "The Transitional Costs of Sectoral Reallocation: Evidence From the Clean Air Act and the Workforce," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(4), pages 1787-1835.
    9. Maxwell, John W & Lyon, Thomas P & Hackett, Steven C, 2000. "Self-Regulation and Social Welfare: The Political Economy of Corporate Environmentalism," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 583-617, October.
    10. Babcock, Linda C & Engberg, John & Glazer, Amihai, 1997. "Wages and Employment in Public-Sector Unions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(3), pages 532-543, July.
    11. Chirinko, Robert S. & Wilsom, Daniel J., 2010. "Can Lower Tax Rates Be Bought? Business Rent-Seeking and Tax Competition Among U.S. States," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 63(4), pages 967-993, December.
    12. Bohara, Alok K & Kaempfer, William H, 1991. "A Test of Tariff Endogeneity in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 952-960, September.
    13. Bombardini, Matilde & Trebbi, Francesco, 2011. "Votes or money? Theory and evidence from the US Congress," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 587-611, August.
    14. Hillman, Arye L & Katz, Eliakim & Rosenberg, Jacob, 1987. "Workers as Insurance: Anticipated Government Assistance and Factor Demand," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 813-820, December.
    15. Sara Fisher Ellison & Catherine Wolfram, 2006. "Coordinating on lower prices: pharmaceutical pricing under political pressure," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 324-340, June.
    16. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1974. "Alternative Theories of Wage Determination and Unemployment in LDC's: The Labor Turnover Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 88(2), pages 194-227.
    17. Stango, Victor, 2003. "Strategic Responses to Regulatory Threat in the Credit Card Market," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 427-452, October.
    18. Akerlof, George A, 1984. "Gift Exchange and Efficiency-Wage Theory: Four Views," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 79-83, May.
    19. Becker Randy A, 2003. "Pollution Abatement Expenditure by U.S. Manufacturing Plants: Do Community Characteristics Matter?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 1-23, December.
    20. Rose, Nancy L, 1987. "Labor Rent Sharing and Regulation: Evidence from the Trucking Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 95(6), pages 1146-1178, December.
    21. George A. Akerlof, 1982. "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(4), pages 543-569.
    22. Wolfgang Keller & Arik Levinson, 2002. "Pollution Abatement Costs and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows to U.S. States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 691-703, November.
    23. Aisbett, Emma & McAusland, Carol, 2013. "Firm characteristics and influence on government rule-making: Theory and evidence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 214-235.
    24. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    25. Michael Greenstone, 1998. "The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Industrial Activity: Evidence from the 1970 and 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments and the Census of Manufacturers," Working Papers 787, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    26. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    27. Chirinko, Robert S. & Wilsom, Daniel J., 2010. "Can Lower Tax Rates Be Bought? Business Rent-Seeking and Tax Competition Among U.S. States," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 63(4), pages 967-993, December.
    28. Amihai Glazer & Henry McMillan, 1992. "Pricing by the Firm Under Regulatory Threat," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 1089-1099.
    29. Cassing, James H & Hillman, Arye L, 1986. "Shifting Comparative Advantage and Senescent Industry Collapse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 516-523, June.
    30. Michael Greenstone, 2002. "The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Industrial Activity: Evidence from the 1970 and 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments and the Census of Manufactures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(6), pages 1175-1219, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Li, Shuo & Wang, Min, 2022. "Environmental Regulation and Firms’ Extensive Margin Decisions," EfD Discussion Paper 22-15, Environment for Development, University of Gothenburg.
    2. Xiaoyang Li & Yue M. Zhou, 2017. "Offshoring Pollution while Offshoring Production?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(11), pages 2310-2329, November.
    3. Cui, Jingbo & Moschini, GianCarlo, 2020. "Firm internal network, environmental regulation, and plant death," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    4. Bonev, Petyo & Glachant, Matthieu & Söderberg, Magnus, 2020. "Testing the regulatory threat hypothesis: Evidence from Sweden," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    5. Bonev, Petyo & Glachant, Matthieu & Söderberg, Magnus, 2018. "A Mechanism for Institutionalised Threat of Regulation: Evidence from the Swedish District Heating Market," Economics Working Paper Series 1805, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    6. Xiaoyang Li & Yue Maggie Zhou, 2016. "Offshoring Pollution While Offshoring Production," Working Papers 16-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Tanaka, Shinsuke, 2015. "Environmental regulations on air pollution in China and their impact on infant mortality," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 90-103.
    8. Xiaoyang Li & Yue Maggie Zhou, 2016. "Offshoring Pollution While Offshoring Production," Working Papers 16-09r, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    9. Zach Raff & Jason M. Walter, 2020. "Regulatory Avoidance and Spillover: The Effects of Environmental Regulation on Emissions at Coal-Fired Power Plants," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 75(3), pages 387-420, March.
    10. Lei Wen & Hongbing Li & Xueying Bian, 2024. "Local environmental legislation and employment growth: evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 26(7), pages 16917-16955, July.
    11. Fan, Haichao & Peng, Yuchao & Wang, Huanhuan & Xu, Zhiwei, 2021. "Greening through finance?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    12. Jonathan Colmer & Ralf Martin & Mirabelle Muûls & Ulrich J. Wagner, 2020. "Does pricing carbon mitigate climate change? Firm-level evidence from the European Union emissions trading scheme," CEP Discussion Papers dp1728, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    13. Copeland, Brian R., 2005. "Policy Endogeneity and the Effects of Trade on the Environment," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 1-15, April.
    14. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Zigan Wang, 2018. "Pollution and Human Capital Migration: Evidence from Corporate Executives," NBER Working Papers 24389, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Tatiane Almeida De Menezes & Isabel Raposo, 2011. "Wage Differentials By Firm Size: Theefficiency Wage Test In Brazil," Anais do XXXVIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 38th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 236, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    16. Joseph S. Shapiro & Reed Walker, 2018. "Why Is Pollution from US Manufacturing Declining? The Roles of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, and Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3814-3854, December.
    17. Consoli, Davide & Marin, Giovanni & Marzucchi, Alberto & Vona, Francesco, 2016. "Do green jobs differ from non-green jobs in terms of skills and human capital?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(5), pages 1046-1060.
    18. Gary Koop & Lise Tole, 2008. "What is the environmental performance of firms overseas? An empirical investigation of the global gold mining industry," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 129-143, October.
    19. Zheng, Siqi & Kahn, Matthew E. & Liu, Hongyu, 2010. "Towards a system of open cities in China: Home prices, FDI flows and air quality in 35 major cities," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-10, January.
    20. Zhang, Pengyang & Zhang, Shuo & Liu, Yu & Peng, Rui & Feng, Kuo, 2024. "China's Low-carbon city policy and manufacturing firms' servitization: Do environmental regulations matterʔ," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political actions; Union behavior; Wage and employment policies;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J51 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ant:wpaper:2015011. 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: Joeri Nys (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ftufsbe.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.