Collective Bargaining Institutions and Demographic Employment Patterns

Abstract

We hypothesize that unions follow wage and employment policies that lead to the unemployment of groups with the best alternatives outside the market economy: youth (education), older individuals (retirement), and women (home production, under a traditional division of labor in the family). Using 1960–96 data from a number of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, we present descriptive data and preliminary regression results suggesting adverse union employment and/or unemployment effects on these groups relative to prime-age males.