Unionism and Employment Behaviour

First paragraph: For many decades the study of the effects of trade unions upon wages has been both a central part of labour economics and one of the most intensively researched parts of applied economics. For the United States alone, Lewis (1986) surveys approximately two hundred econometric studies. As Hamermesh and Rees (1988), Hirsch and Addison (1986) and Freeman and Medoff (1984) all note, however, there is almost no equivalent evidence on the consequences of trade union activity for the level and growth of employment. This paper is an attempt to fill that gap. It uses a microeconomic data set on British establishments to examine the effects of unionism upon employment behaviour