Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Effect of Unionization on the Distribution of Wages

经济学博士论文研究：工会化对工资分配的影响

• 批准号: 0922355
• 负责人: Joshua Angrist
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-15 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0922355&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Effect

The objective of the research is to estimate the causal effect of unionization on the distribution of wages. A fundamental obstacle to measuring the effect of unionization on wages is selection bias: wages within unionized plants may differ for reasons other than the fact that workers there are represented by a union. Differences in either worker or plant characteristics could give rise to an observed difference between the distribution of wages inside and outside of the unionized sector, confounding the true effect of unionization. This study seeks to overcome these selection issues by using a regression discontinuity (RD) research design. The critical feature of the design in this context is that in order for a union to represent workers at a plant, a majority of the workers must vote for it in a certification election. If plants and workers where the union barely won the election are comparable to plants and workers where the union barely lost, then the effect of unionization on the distribution of wages can be estimated. The research implements a newly developed methodology to estimate distributional effects using the RD design. The methodology allows for unionization to have heterogeneous effects, and allows for selection effects in union status. The estimates produced by this methodology are consistent for the effect of unionization on the distribution of wages for plants that were close to the election share cutoff of 50 percent. In order to measure the effect of unionization on the distribution of workers' wages, the research uses individual-level wage data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program. The Employment History File (EHF) contains quarterly records of individuals' UI-covered earnings. This project uses the LEHD's Unit-to-Worker imputation to merge individual wage data with plant-level NLRB union certification election data. The role of unions in the labor market and their effect on the distribution of wages have long been an important topic in labor economics, but especially over the past three decades, as the decline in unionization rates may be a contributing factor to the increasing inequality observed in the US income distribution. Research to date has tended to focus on average effects because of available econometric techniques. A number of recent studies (e.g., DiNardo and Lee, 2004) have introduced quasi-experimental methods, including RD to estimate the causal effect of unions on economic outcomes. This is a promising approach to overcome the classical selection bias. Many studies have also considered the effect of unions on inequality, but none to date have combined quasi-experimental methods with a focus on distributional effects. The intellectual merit of this study lies in the application of new econometric techniques to estimate using a quasi-experimental design, the distributional effect of unionization, and in the use of large administrative datasets that are likely to provide better accuracy and statistical power than survey data used in many previous studies.Broader Impacts: The causal effect of unionization on the distribution of wages is important to to discussions of inequality, both in policy and academic circles. The broader impact of the research includes informing policy debates around the role of unions in the labor market (for example, the Card Check Bill recently introduced in Congress), as well as the academic debate about the relative importance of institutional change versus skill-biased technological change. Another broader impact is the creation of a single dataset with merged administrative data on both individual workers and plants which will of value to future researchers.

这项研究的目的是评估工会对工资分配的因果影响。衡量工会对工资影响的一个根本障碍是选择偏见：加入工会的工厂内的工资可能会因为其他原因而不同，而不是那里的工人由工会代表这一事实。工人或工厂特征的差异可能导致工会部门内外工资分配的观察到的差异，混淆了工会的真正效果。这项研究试图通过使用回归不连续(RD)研究设计来克服这些选择问题。在这种情况下，设计的关键特征是，为了让工会代表工厂的工人，大多数工人必须在认证选举中投票支持它。如果工会勉强赢得选举的工厂和工人可以与工会勉强输掉的工厂和工人相提并论，那么成立工会对工资分配的影响是可以估计的。这项研究采用了一种新开发的方法来使用RD设计来估计分布效应。该方法允许工会具有不同的效果，并允许在工会状态下的选择效果。这一方法得出的估计结果与工会对接近选举份额50%的工厂工资分配的影响是一致的。为了衡量工会对工人工资分配的影响，这项研究使用了美国人口普查局的纵向雇主-家庭动态(Lehd)计划中的个人水平工资数据。就业历史文件(EHF)包含个人在用户界面覆盖的收入的季度记录。该项目使用Lehd的单位对工人的分配，将个人工资数据与工厂级别的NLRB工会认证选举数据合并。工会在劳动力市场中的作用及其对工资分配的影响长期以来一直是劳动经济学中的一个重要话题，但在过去30年里尤其如此，因为工会率的下降可能是美国收入分配不平等加剧的一个促成因素。由于可用的计量经济学技术，迄今为止的研究往往集中在平均效应上。最近的一些研究(例如，DiNardo和Lee，2004)引入了准实验方法，包括RD来估计工会对经济结果的因果效应。这是克服经典选择偏差的一种很有前途的方法。许多研究也考虑了联盟对不平等的影响，但到目前为止还没有一项研究将准实验方法与关注分配效应相结合。这项研究的智力价值在于，应用新的计量经济学技术，使用准实验设计来估计工会化的分配效应，并使用可能提供比许多先前研究中使用的调查数据更好的准确性和统计能力的大型行政数据集。更广泛的影响：工会化对工资分配的因果效应对于政策和学术界关于不平等的讨论都是重要的。这项研究的更广泛影响包括为围绕工会在劳动力市场中的角色的政策辩论提供信息(例如，最近在国会提出的信用卡支票法案)，以及关于制度变革与以技能为导向的技术变革的相对重要性的学术辩论。另一个更广泛的影响是创建一个单一的数据集，其中包含关于个体工人和工厂的合并管理数据，这将对未来的研究人员具有价值。